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Onomatopoeia vs Hyperbole - What's the difference?

onomatopoeia | hyperbole |

In uncountable terms the difference between onomatopoeia and hyperbole

is that onomatopoeia is the property of a word of sounding like what it represents while hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration.

In countable terms the difference between onomatopoeia and hyperbole

is that onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like what it represents, such as "gurgle" or "hiss" while hyperbole is an instance or example of this technique.

onomatopoeia

Alternative forms

* onomatopeia *

Noun

  • (uncountable) The property of a word of sounding like what it represents.
  • * {{quote-book
  • , year= 1553 , year_published= 1909 , author= , (Desiderius Erasmus) , by= , title= Arte of Rhetorique , url= http://books.google.com/books?id=6p0xbOGIz2MC&pg=PA173 , original= , chapter= , section= , isbn= , edition= , publisher= Clarendon Press , location= Oxford , editor= , volume= , page= , passage= A woorde making called of the Grecians Onomatapoia , is when wee make wordes of our owne minde, such as bee derived from the nature of things. }}
  • (countable) A word that sounds like what it represents, such as "gurgle" or "hiss".
  • (uncountable, rhetoric) The use of language whose sound imitates that which it names.
  • Synonyms

    * imitative harmony * mimesis * sound symbolism

    hyperbole

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (uncountable) Extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device.
  • (uncountable) Deliberate exaggeration.
  • (countable) An instance or example of this technique.
  • (countable, obsolete) A hyperbola.
  • Quotations

    {{timeline, 1600s=1602, 1800s=1837 1841 1843, 1900s=1910, 2000s=2001}} * 1602 — i 3 *: ...and when he speaks
    'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar'd,
    Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd,
    Would seem hyperboles . * 1837 — *: The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole , a feature of grandeur and magnificence. * 1841 — , ch. 28 *: "Nay - nay - good Sumach," interrupted Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole with patience. * 1843 — *: The honourable gentleman forces us to hear a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and hyperboles , Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort of eloquence? * c.1910 — *: Of course the hymn has come to us from somewhere else, but I do not know from where; and the average native of our village firmly believes that it is indigenous to our own soil—which it can not be, unless it deals in hyperbole , for the nearest approach to a river in our neighborhood is the village pond. * 2001 - Tom Bentley, Daniel Stedman Jones, The Moral Universe *: The perennial problem, especially for the BBC, has been to reconcile the hyperbole -driven agenda of newspapers with the requirement of balance, which is crucial to the public service remit.

    Synonyms

    * overstatement * exaggeration

    Antonyms

    * meiosis * understatement

    Derived terms

    * hyperbolic

    See also

    * adynaton ----