exaggeration
Americannoun
-
the act of exaggerating or overstating.
-
an instance of exaggerating; an overstatement.
His statement concerning the size of his income is a gross exaggeration.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of exaggeration
1555–65; < Latin exaggerātiōn- (stem of exaggerātiō ), equivalent to exaggerāt ( us ) ( see exaggerate) + -iōn- -ion
Explanation
If you're prone to exaggeration, it means you habitually overstate the truth. If you have a dog and a hamster, it would be an exaggeration to describe yourself as "practically Doctor Dolittle," living in a house full of animals. When you make something showier, or more noticeable than normal, that's also called exaggeration. The exaggeration of your hand movements might be necessary on stage so the audience can see them, but in real life it just looks silly. Exaggeration comes from the Latin word exaggerare, which means to magnify or to heap or pile on.
Vocabulary lists containing exaggeration
AP English Lit exam terms
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Essential Literary Terms
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Theodore Roosevelt on "The Man with the Muck Rake" (1906)
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"It is no exaggeration to call this extreme heat a 'disaster' with many people being rushed to hospitals or even dying as a result of heatstroke," it said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 22, 2026
The word "rot" is clearly an exaggeration, but new research suggests that heavy television viewing may still have meaningful consequences for brain health.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 21, 2026
He thought the cost quoted by Jersey Water was an "exaggeration" and that the panel's lower-cost calculations were based on retro-fitting existing water treatment plants rather than building a new one.
From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026
“Here, we see characters sad in the way that we are sad and we go, ‘Oh, this is not a cartoon exaggeration of our sadness.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026
I hear everything Ms. Weber is saying, every lie and exaggeration.
From "Piecing Me Together" by Renée Watson
More important, we should be wary of the vast chasm between the frenzied exaggerations of the media that attend this case and its actual significance.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 23, 2026
Wednesday's report confirms inaccuracies and exaggerations despite being there "a significant level of disorder" around the fixture.
From BBC ● Jan. 14, 2026
A cartoon version of Jenny Schecter come to life, what transpires in her novel is close, if not on the nose, to what takes place around her, buffered by changed names and literary exaggerations.
From Salon ● Sep. 6, 2025
For at Disneyland, exaggerations are the norm, and if we let ourselves live in these abstracted worlds, we can sense their heightened emotions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 21, 2025
I’ve always suspected that notions like a “hot hand” or a “clutch hitter” or a “team that always comes back” were exaggerations used by sports- writers and sportscasters just to have something to talk about.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
