Macbeth looks at his hands after the murder and decides the sea can't clean them. Worse, the blood will turn the sea red. That's hyperbole. Cambridge Dictionary calls it a way of speaking or writing that makes something sound bigger, better or worse than it is, used "to express humor or great emotion".
Everyday Hyperbole Examples
Everyday hyperbole is so worn that it barely registers. Beside each phrase is what the speaker means:
| Common phrase | What it means |
|---|---|
| I've told you a million times. | I've told you more than once. |
| I'm so hungry I could eat a horse. | I'm very hungry. |
| This bag weighs a ton. | This bag is heavy. |
| It took forever. | It took longer than I wanted. |
| I've been waiting for ages. | I've been waiting a while. |
| I'm dying of thirst. | I'm thirsty. |
| I nearly died laughing. | It was very funny. |
| My feet are killing me. | My feet hurt. |
| I have a million things to do. | I'm busy. |
| I haven't seen you in a hundred years. | It's been a long time. |
| It's freezing in here. | It's cold in here. |
| I'm so tired I could sleep for a week. | I'm very tired. |
| He's as old as the hills. | He's old. |
| She's got tons of money. | She's rich. |
| This is the worst day of my life. | Today went badly. |
| I could do this in my sleep. | This is easy for me. |
| The line went on for miles. | The line was long. |
| You could have knocked me over with a feather. | I was very surprised. |
In dialogue, these phrases make a character sound ordinary and relaxed. In narration they read as filler, because the writer borrowed the exaggeration instead of building one.
Hyperbole in Shakespeare
"Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red."
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2. "Incarnadine" means to dye red, and the last line says it again in plain words.
"I lov’d Ophelia; forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / Make up my sum."
Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1. At Ophelia's grave, Hamlet is trying to outdo the grief of her brother, Laertes.
"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!"
Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5. Romeo's first sight of Juliet: the torches learn how to shine from her.
"her eyes in heaven / Would through the airy region stream so bright / That birds would sing and think it were not night."
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2. Put her eyes in the sky and the birds would take night for morning.
"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus, and we petty men / Walk under his huge legs, and peep about"
Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2. Cassius makes Caesar a giant straddling the world. He's talking to Brutus, and the giant is there to make Brutus feel small.
"Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch / Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space."
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene 1. Antony would let Rome dissolve into its river and the empire collapse sooner than leave Egypt.
"I’ll put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes."
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. Puck's boast: around the whole globe in forty minutes.
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Hyperbole in Poetry
The first two are love poems, where the speaker is trying to measure something that has no scale.
"An hundred years should go to praise / Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze; / Two hundred to adore each breast, / But thirty thousand to the rest;"
Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress", in The Oxford Book of English Verse. The years climb from a hundred to thirty thousand. Then the poem admits there's no such time.
"Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, / And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;"
Robert Burns, "A Red, Red Rose", in his Poems and Songs. He'll love her until every sea is dry and the sun melts rock.
"Ten thousand saw I at a glance, / Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
William Wordsworth, "I wandered lonely as a cloud", in The Oxford Book of English Verse. Nobody counts ten thousand daffodils at a glance.
"Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Concord Hymn", in his Poems, written for the monument at Concord bridge.
Hyperbole in the Bible and Homer
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
King James Bible, Matthew 19:24. A camel through a needle's eye is impossible on purpose: that's how hard it is for the rich.
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
King James Bible, Matthew 7:3. A mote is a speck of dust; a beam is a roof timber, and nobody walks around with one in their eye.
"the son of Tydeus caught up a mighty stone, so huge and great that as men now are it would take two to lift it; nevertheless he bore it aloft with ease unaided"
Homer, The Iliad, Book 5, in Samuel Butler's translation.
"I could not name every single one of them though I had ten tongues, and though my voice failed not and my heart were of bronze within me"
The Iliad, Book 2. The army is too big to name with ten tongues and a heart of bronze, so the poet lists the ships instead.
Hyperbole in Prose
"Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo Shefin Mully Ully Gue, most mighty Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions extend five thousand blustrugs (about twelve miles in circumference) to the extremities of the globe"
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, Part 1, Chapter 3. The title claims the universe; Swift's own parenthesis shrinks the empire to twelve miles.
"I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but no one with such justice."
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 60. Elizabeth, engaged, in a letter to her aunt. She claims the superlative, then insists she has earned it.
"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger"
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9. Catherine weighs Heathcliff against the end of the universe.
"every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave 1. Scrooge, to his nephew, on Christmas Eve.
"Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me."
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 36. Ahab, to Starbuck, who has just called the hunt for the whale blasphemous.
"Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand!"
Moby-Dick, Chapter 104. Ishmael needs a volcano for an inkwell to write about the whale.
"I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell."
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart", in The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 2. The narrator offers this hearing as proof that he isn't mad.
"I could forgive the boy, now, if he’d committed a million sins!"
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter 19, Aunt Polly speaking.
"Why, it’s a million times bullier than pirating."
Tom Sawyer, Chapter 35. Huck's verdict, in a boy's voice.
"He said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his hand."
Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 10. Jim would take a bad-luck omen a thousand times over touching a snakeskin once.
"In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record."
Twain, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences". A mock score, 114 out of 115, for the faults in two-thirds of a page of James Fenimore Cooper.
"I’m p-paralysed with happiness."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1. Daisy, greeting Nick.
Tall Tales: Hyperbole as the Whole Story
The American tall tale is built out of exaggeration: it's the plot, and the teller keeps a straight face.
"Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side!"
Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Chapter 3. A raftsman's brag before a fight.
"I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing!"
Life on the Mississippi, Chapter 3. The same raftsman. Note the sick-day menu is worse than the healthy one.
"I would have agreed to fight a whole regiment of wild cats if she would only have said she would have me."
David Crockett, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, Chapter 3. Crockett's price for a yes.
"Babe was seven axehandles wide between the eyes according to some authorities; others equally dependable say forty-two axehandles and a plug of tobacco."
William B. Laughead, The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan, on Babe the Blue Ox. Two "authorities" disagree by thirty-five axe handles, and the plug of tobacco settles nothing.
"Once a settler and his wife and baby fell into one of these tracks and the son got out when he was fifty-seven years old and reported the accident."
Laughead, on Babe's hoofprints.
"an idea of the size of the tables is gained from the fact that they distributed the pepper with four-horse teams."
Laughead, on Paul Bunyan's cook camp.
How to Write Hyperbole That Lands
- Make the number exact. "A lot of offences" is nothing. Twain's score of 114 out of 115 is a joke. Laughead's "forty-two axehandles and a plug of tobacco" works the same way: the precise, useless detail is what makes it funny.
- Give it to a character, in their voice. Huck's "a million times bullier" and Ahab's "I'd strike the sun" are both hyperbole, and nobody would mix them up. An exaggeration tells the reader who is talking.
- Keep the truth in sight. No. 16 puts the real size, twelve miles, right next to the inflated one, and the distance between the two is where the laugh comes from.
- Save it for the peak. Macbeth's ocean comes minutes after the murder, at the height of his horror. Put yours where the feeling is strongest, and leave the paragraphs around it plain.
Metaphor, personification and the rest have their own figurative language examples. A simile compares with "like" or "as" and can be perfectly accurate; hyperbole can't be. Its opposite is understatement, saying less than the truth.
Hyperbole FAQ
Is hyperbole the same as lying?
No. A lie wants to be believed. Hyperbole only works when both sides know it isn't true: nobody thinks the speaker actually could eat a horse.
How do you pronounce hyperbole?
hy-PER-buh-lee, four syllables, with the stress on the second. It doesn't rhyme with "Super Bowl".
