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Hyperbole vs Oxymoron - What's the difference?

hyperbole | oxymoron |

As nouns the difference between hyperbole and oxymoron

is that hyperbole is extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device while oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two words with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect.

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 ----

    oxymoron

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • A figure of speech in which two words with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect.
  • * A famous example is Milton, Paradise Lost , Book 1, ll. 63-4:
  • No light, but rather darkness visible
    Serv'd only to discover sights of woe
  • * Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet , Act 1. Scene 1, in which Romeo utters nine oxymora in just six lines of soliloquy:
  • Why then, O brawling love', O ' loving hate ,
    O anything, from nothing first create,
    O heavy lightness'! ' Serious vanity !
    Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
    Feather of lead', '''bright smoke''', '''cold fire''', ' sick health ,
    Still-waking sleep , that is not what it is!
    This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
  • (general) A contradiction in terms.
  • Usage notes

    * Historically, an (term) was "a (paradox) with a point",Jebb, Sir Richard (1900). Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part III: The Antigone] . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. where the contradiction seems absurd at first glance, and yet is deliberate, its purpose being to underscore a point or to draw attention to a concealed point. The modern usage of (term) as a synonym for the simpler contradiction in terms is considered incorrect by some speakers and writers, and is perhaps best avoided in certain contexts. (See also the [[w:oxymoron, Wikipedia article].)

    Derived terms

    * oxymoronic * oxymoronically * oxymoronicness

    See also

    *

    References