Tropes & Figures
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a trope of artistic exaggeration of the size, force, quantity or significance of an object or phenomenon for the sake of intensifying the impression and emotional expressiveness ("rivers of blood," "to wait a hundred years," "a sea of tears"). Hyperbole makes no claim to literal veracity: its aim is to strike the imagination, to emphasise an exceptional degree of a feature, to lend the image scale or pathos. It is widely represented in folklore (the epic hero), in satire, where it serves as a means of exposure, and in Romantic lyric with its gravitation toward extremely strong feelings. The opposite trope is litotes — artistic understatement. Hyperbole may combine with metaphor and simile, forming complex hyperbolic images in poetic and prose speech.
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Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Opposite tropes of degree. Hyperbole artistically EXAGGERATES size, force or significance ("rivers of blood") to strike the imagination and emphasise an exceptional degree. Litotes, conversely, UNDERSTATES ("next to nothing") or affirms through the negation of the opposite ("not without talent"). Both work on the contrast between real degree and linguistic presentation, but in opposite directions.
