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Hyperbole examples from fiction. Linguistic understatement

Hyperbole examples from fiction. Linguistic understatement

16.03.2019

Hyperbole is an exaggeration. Meet her like colloquial speech, as well as in literature.

Hyperbole is designed to enhance the expressiveness of the statement in order to show its special significance.

This reception was highly favored by Mayakovsky.

Here's another example:

Hyperbole is used to create brightness in text and is mainly needed to give expressiveness to text. Hyperbole deliberately greatly exaggerates an idea or object that it looks beyond almost beyond the real. Hyperbole should be applied appropriately to the topic.

Hyperbole (in literature) is a kind of literary device, the meaning of which is a figurative exaggeration of a particular action as a whole. For example: I have already said this a thousand and one times, that is, there is an excessive exaggeration in this sentence, since normal person will not repeat any word or expression a thousand times.

Hyperbole is a stylistic figure of explicit and intentional exaggeration, in order to enhance expressiveness and underline what was said.

Hyperbole is an exaggeration in a text. With the help of hyperbole, the author enhances the necessary impression, emphasizes what he glorifies or ridicules.

I to you a hundred times said!

Hyperbole, including in literature, is an exaggeration of some property or quality. For example, in the literature, there is such an expression as dark, at least gouge out your eyes. This is just hyperbole.

Hyperbole means exaggeration. This is the name of a literary device, the essence of which is the deliberate exaggeration of the qualities or properties of the described object or character in order to enhance the impression of the reader. For example, the famous Gogol rare bird will fly to the middle of the Dnieper - hyperbole. It is clear that any bird will fly to the middle of the Dnieper, but Gogol's technique emphasizes the greatness and power of the river.

I personally believe that the use of hyperbole in literature and especially literature for children is simply necessary. Otherwise it will be boring to read. And some works simply would not have been born. In many works, this is simply necessary to emphasize the strength and scale of actions.

Hyperbole can be called an exaggeration (to put it simply). Writers use this technique to express emotions more, to enhance the impression.

Example of hyperbole (exaggeration):

I've said this a million times already!

You can often find this approach in folk art(for example, in epics and fairy tales).

Under such a concept as hyperbole in the literature is meant an exaggeration of various kinds. Very many if not all works contain at least some exaggeration. An example of a hyperbole would be the following:

The dog was the size of a huge tower.

Hyperbole is an exaggeration. For example, Ilya Muromets, fighting with enemies, beat the entire enemy army. One person cannot do this. So the author used hyperbole. Hyperbole is used to interest the reader, to enhance the expressiveness of the text, to emphasize some details.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. All of us in life at least once said or heard such an expression (and someone more than once): YOU ARE FOREVER LATE or HAVEN'T SEEN FOR A HUNDRED YEARS.

And few people thought that these phrases are devoid of some common sense. So, a person simply cannot be “always late”. And it’s impossible for someone not to see each other for “a hundred years”, if only because people rarely live so long.

Such exaggerations in Russian are called hyperbole and it is about them that this publication will be discussed.

Hyperbole is a beautiful exaggeration

This word itself is Greek - "hyperbole" and it means "excess, excess, exaggeration."

Hyperbole is one of the means amplification of emotional evaluation, which consists in the excessive exaggeration of any phenomena, qualities, properties or processes. This creates a more impressive image.

And often the exaggeration comes to completely incomprehensible concepts, sometimes even. Any foreigner, if he translates word for word, will be clearly puzzled. We have long been accustomed to them, and perceive them as completely normal.

Here are examples of the most commonly used hyperbole in everyday life:

SCARE TO DEATH
A THOUSAND APOLOGIES
AT LEAST FILL
RIVERS OF BLOOD
MOUNTAINS OF CORPSES
WAIT FOR EVER
GO FOR A THOUSAND KILOMETERS
STOOD ALL DAY
A LOT OF MONEY
A PIR FOR THE WHOLE WORLD
SEA OF TEARS
DON'T SEE YOU FOR 100 YEARS
OCEAN OF PASSION
WEIGHS A HUNDRED POUDS
SMOKING IN EMBRACES
SCARED TO DEATH

All of the above expressions we constantly use in colloquial speech. And for the sake of experiment, just try to parse them verbatim and see how some of them are funny, and sometimes absurd.

Well, for example, “at least fill up” - it should be such an amount of liquid that it is enough for a whole pool in which one could dive headlong. Although in fact we just want to say with this expression that we have a lot of drinks - even more than we need.

Or the phrase "a lot of money" actually means just good financial condition, and not that a person has collected all his savings and let's put them in one pile.

And the expression "to go a thousand kilometers" we use, never when we are talking about the real distance, for example, from Moscow to Volgograd or Rostov-on-Don. But simply in the meaning of "far", although in fact in real numbers there the distance may be only a few kilometers.

And so you can "debunk" absolutely any hyperbole. But you should not do this. They should not mean the absolute truth, their task is to most picturesquely characterize specific situation or a thought enhancing its emotional coloring.

Examples of hyperbole in fiction

In fact, such exaggerations are a very old literary device. It was used, and this was almost a thousand years ago. With the help of hyperbolas, the strength of the heroes and their opponents was repeatedly strengthened.

The heroic dream lasted 12 DAYS (well, a person cannot sleep for almost two weeks)
Innumerable forces stood in the way of the hero - THE WOLF WILL NOT RUN THEM IN A DAY, THE RAVEN WILL NOT FLY AROUND THEM IN A DAY (how many enemies should there be - a million?)
The hero will wave his hand - AMONG THE ENEMIES, THE STREET, he will wave the other - THE ALLEY (that is, the hero kills several dozen at once with one blow)
Ilya Muromets took a mace WEIGHTING ONE HUNDRED POUDS (here you need to understand that one hundred pounds is one and a half tons)
The nightingale the robber whistles - THE FOREST LEANS TO THE GROUND, and PEOPLE FALL DEAD (well, here it’s something from the category of a fairy tale)

Exactly the same hyperbolas occur in in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". For example:

“Rusichi with scarlet shields blocked wide brim, looking for honor for himself, and glory for the prince "or" An army such that you can splash the Volga with oars, and scoop out the Don with helmets.

Among writers, the most hyperbole occurs in Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. There are exaggerations in almost every famous work. Here, for example, he describes the Dnieper River:

A rare bird will fly to the middle of the Dnieper.
The Dnieper is like a road without end in length and without measure in width.

Or he uses exaggerations in his own, putting them into the mouths of heroes:

I would erase everything into flour! (Mayor)
Thirty-five thousand one couriers ... Me myself state council fears. (Khlestakov)

And in " Dead souls"There are such words:" Human passions are countless as the sands of the sea.

Hyperbole is used by almost any writer or poet. With their help, for example, they more colorfully describe the character of the heroes of the works or show their author's attitude to them.

Moreover, writers often do not use already established expressions, but try to come up with something of their own.

Here's another examples of hyperbolas in literature:

And the mountain of bloody bodies prevented the balls from flying (Lermontov)
The sunset was blazing in one hundred and forty suns (Mayakovsky)
A million torments (Griboyedov)
A decent person is ready to run away for you to distant lands (Dostoevsky)
And the pine reaches the stars (Mandelstam)
In a dream, the janitor became heavy as a chest of drawers (Ilf and Petrov)

Examples of hyperbole in advertising

Of course, past this interesting reception, which allows enhance real value words, advertisers could not get through. A lot of slogans are based on this principle. After all, the task is to attract the attention of the client, while promising "mountains of gold" and in every possible way emphasizing the uniqueness of the product:

Taste on the edge of the possible (chewing gum "Stimorol")
Control over the elements (Sneakers "Adidas")
King of salads (mayonnaise "Olivies")

In the creation of commercials, the principle of hyperbole is also often used. For example, a series famous videos about Snickers bars with the slogan "You're not you when you're hungry." Where various characters turn into completely different people and start doing all sorts of stupid things, and only a chocolate bar is able to return them to their usual course.

In these videos, the feeling of hunger and the “miraculous” power of the Snickers itself are clearly exaggerated (greatly exaggerated).

Well the simplest example The hyperbole that is used in advertising is expressions like “the best”, “the most stylish”, “the most comfortable” and so on, but about prices, on the contrary, they say “the lowest”.

Instead of a conclusion

It is possible to give greater expressiveness and emotional coloring to any expression not only with the help of hyperbole. There is a technique in Russian that is its complete opposite. He does not exaggerate, but, on the contrary, reduces the value.

You won't have time to blink an eye, and the years have already flown by.

This technique is called "". More on this in our next article.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site

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The development of the Russian literary language and the first paths

The literary Russian language began to take shape as early as the 11th century, during the existence of the state Kievan Rus. Then the first chronicles and masterpieces of ancient Russian literature were created. A thousand years ago, the authors used language (tropes): personification, epithet, metaphor, hyperbole and litote. Examples of these terms are still common both in fiction and in everyday speech.

The concepts of "hyperbole" and "litote"

Having heard the term “hyperbole” for the first time, connoisseurs of history will surely correlate it with the legendary country of Hyperborea, and mathematicians will remember the line consisting of two branches, which is called hyperbole. But how does this term relate to literature? Hyperbole is used to enhance the expressiveness of the statement and intentional exaggeration. It is easy to guess that this term has an antonym, because if the language has means for exaggeration, there must certainly be a stylistic figure that serves as an understatement. Litota is such an artistic and expressive means. The following examples will clearly show what a litote is and how often it is used in speech.

A thousand year history of hyperbole

Hyperbole is very common in ancient Russian literature, for example, in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign": "To that in Polotsk he rang the morning bell, early at St. Sophia's bells, and he heard the ringing in Kiev." Analyzing the sentence, one can understand the meaning: the sound of the bell that rang in Polotsk reached Kyiv! Of course, in reality this cannot be, otherwise the inhabitants of nearby settlements would lose their hearing. The term is of Latin origin: hyperbole means "exaggeration" in translation. Hyperbole was used by almost all poets and writers, but especially her frequent use Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin stood out in their works. So, in Gogol's play "The Inspector General" on the table was "a watermelon worth seven hundred rubles" - another exaggeration, because a watermelon cannot cost so much if it is, of course, not golden. In Mayakovsky's "Extraordinary Adventure", the sunset was blazing "one hundred and forty suns", that is, incredibly bright.

Litota in fiction

Having found out the meaning of the hyperbole, it will not be difficult to figure out the litote. This term was also often referred to by Gogol. In the story "Nevsky Prospekt" he described the mouth of one person so small that he could not miss more than two pieces. Nikolai Nekrasov's famous poem“Peasant Children” the hero is a little man with a fingernail, but this does not mean his height is a centimeter: the author only wanted to emphasize with a litote that an old short man is carrying a heavy armful of firewood. Proposals with litotes can also be found in other authors. By the way, this term originated from Greek word litotes, which means "simplicity, restraint".

Litota and hyperbole in everyday speech

A person, without noticing it, uses hyperbole and litotes in Everyday life Often. If you can still guess the meaning of hyperbole thanks to the well-known one-root verb “hyperbolize”, what is a litote remains a mystery to many. Having gone bankrupt, the rich man will say: “I have money - the cat cried,” and when you see a tiny girl walking down the street, you can notice what a “inch” she is, and if it’s a little guy, “a boy with a finger.” This is the most common examples lithos. Each of us also uses hyperbole very often, for example, having met a friend by chance, the first remark will be “have not seen each other for a hundred years”, and the mother, tired of making the same remark to her fidget-son, will say: “I told you a thousand times!” . So, we can once again conclude that not everyone knows what litote and hyperbole are, but even a three-year-old child uses these techniques.

Cultural significance of the trails

The role of stylistic figures in the Russian language is great: they give emotional coloring, enhance images and make speech more expressive. Without them, the works of Pushkin and Lermontov would have lost their splendor, and now you can use beautiful turns of speech more confidently, because you know, for example, what a litote is.

In literature, it is impossible to do without these techniques that make the Russian language one of the most expressive, complex and rich. So take care of the Russian language - this treasure, this property, as Turgenev and our other outstanding compatriots bequeathed to us.

Hyperbole (from Greek hyperbole - exaggeration). "All great works. - A. Gorky wrote, - all those works that are examples of highly fiction rest precisely on exaggeration, on a broad typification of phenomena. Gorky confidently and unmistakably puts exaggeration and typification side by side, based on his own writing and reading experience, understanding by this the artist’s ability and ability to see the most essential in the observed phenomena, to extract the main meaning from them, to condense it with the power of imagination into an artistic image.

Exaggeration is the "core" of typing.

One of the most effective and effective techniques artistic exaggeration- hyperbole in literature. It allows you to “imagine the unimaginable”, “correlate the incommensurable”, that is, to give this or that detail most sharply and sharply - in a portrait, in the internal appearance of a character, in the phenomenon of the objective world. We emphasize - objective. Because, speaking of hyperbole, one should keep in mind that no matter how incredible, no matter how fantastic it may be, it is always based on life material, life content.

The artistic persuasiveness and ambiguity of hyperbole are all the more significant, the more clearly the reader imagines the specific essence of the image or situation. So, one of the main characters of Gogol's "Inspector General" Khlestakov says about himself that he has "unusual lightness in thoughts." In a society based on universal servility, on all-embracing hypocrisy, Khlestakov’s lie, for all its hyperbolic absurdity (“as I pass through the department, it’s just an earthquake, everything trembles and shakes like a leaf,” etc.), is taken by provincial officials for pure the truth.

Another example. In Marquez's novel "Autumn of the Patriarch", the story of the "thousand-year-old" patriarch is told from "we", and this method of using a collective point of view, polyphony, makes it possible to feel and imagine the atmosphere of rumors and omissions about the hero. Nothing is known for sure about the dictator from the very beginning - until the end of the book. Each new interpretation of his actions reveals only one of the sides of his appearance, where exclusivity, dissimilarity with ordinary people. And this gives the whole style of narration a certain hyperbolicity.

To create a hyperbolic artistic image are used different kinds tropes: comparisons, similes, metaphors, epithets, etc. Their function is to exaggerate the subject, to clearly reveal the contradiction between its content and form, to make the image more impressive, catchy. By the way, the same goal can be pursued by understatement, litote, which can be considered as a kind of hyperbole, like hyperbole in the literature “with a minus sign”. Depending on the socio-aesthetic orientation of the work, the same event can be perceived as "giant" or as "small". In D. Swift's novel Lemuel Gulliver's Travels, hyperbole and litotes coexist: in the first part of the book modern writer England is shown, as it were, through a diminishing glass, in the second - through a magnifying glass. In the country of the Lilliputians, oxen and sheep are so tiny that the hero loads them into his boat by the hundreds. To match these dimensions and everything else that Gulliver faces in this country, up to social structure and political events. With a satirical understatement, Swift makes the reader understand that the claims of the island, "Lilliputian", in essence, England to world domination (to the role of "mistress of the seas", to vast colonial possessions, etc.), which seemed to many Englishmen great, grandiose, if you think about it, are insignificant and even funny.

Impressive is another hyperbolic image - from the very beginning of the novel: the hero comes to his senses after a shipwreck and cannot tear his head off the ground - each of his hair is wound on a “Lilliputian” peg driven into the ground. Here, the hyperbole in literature takes on a symbolic sound, suggests a person in captivity in a multitude of insignificant passions and circumstances...

Exactly at satire hyperbole is most often appropriate and artistically justified. V. Astafiev in "Tsar-fish" with the help of this technique reveals the inner squalor of one of the "nature lovers", the poacher Grokhotalo: shaking the shore with snoring, as if from the womb to the throat, from the throat to the womb, the anchor chain of the ship rocked by the waves was rolling. Here comes through author's assessment a character with his insatiably aggressive attitude towards nature, a character personifying soulless dullness. However, hyperbole in literature, even "ridiculing", may not be overtly satirical. The range of use of this prima is quite wide, it covers humor, irony, and comedy.

The history of hyperbole goes back into the distant past - into folklore, into folk tales, generous on satirical images and comic situations. However, at about the same time, a completely different kind of hyperbole arose - very far from laughter. In epics, legends, heroic tales, we find one that can be called idealizing. So, in the Russian epic is captured historical experience people, their heroic struggle against invaders and oppressors. In images epic heroes the people expressed their understanding of duty and honor, courage and patriotism, kindness and selflessness. Heroes of epics - heroes - are endowed with ideal human qualities, as a rule, exaggerated, hyperbolic. In the depiction of the epic hero, his supernatural character is primarily emphasized. physical strength: “If there was a ring in the earth, / And there would be a ring in the sky, / I would grab these rings in one hand, / I would pull the sky to the ground,” says the epic about Ilya Muromets. His armament, his actions are exaggerated in a similar way. On the battlefield, he wields an iron mace-shalyga "weighing exactly one hundred pools", a bow and arrows "a sazhen in a scythe", or even simply grabs the legs of an enemy who has turned up and crushes the enemy's "great power" with them: he waves to the right - appears in an enemy crowd "street", to the left - "lane". The horse of Ilya Muromets can overcome many miles in one gallop, because it flies "above a standing forest, a little lower than a walking cloud" ...

Hyperbolized - but already satirically - and the images of opponents epic heroes. For example, if Ilya Muromets looks no different from those around him, then his “adversary” Idolishche is both “two fathoms” tall and “oblique fathoms” in his shoulders, and his eyes are like “beer bowls”, and his nose is like “elbow "... Thanks to this contrasting external comparison, the victory of the hero looks especially impressive, deserving of popular glorification.

Romantic writers widely used the idealizing metaphor in their work, opposing the spiritual, inhuman reality with their ideal, the aesthetic ideal of romanticism. We can easily find numerous examples of this kind in Gogol's Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, in the books of Veltman and Odoevsky, Hugo, Hoffmann, Chamisso...

Hyperbole, the examples and definition of which we have presented in this article, remains one of the most commonly used and effective literary devices. Such people willingly resorted to him various writers like Ch. Aitmatov and V. Orlov, B. Okudzhava and A. Voznesensky, A. Kim and N. Dumbadze and many others. And we can confidently say that having lived in literature long life hyperbole remains the true ally of the artist both in the fight against the negative phenomena of life and in the creative affirmation of the moral ideal.

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Updated: 2015-11-23

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More than once I have heard, and even used, such a term as hyperbole.

Hyperbole in the literature is used, as a rule, in order to designate a stylistic device of a special exaggeration of the properties of the described phenomenon or object, thereby enhancing the impression made.

In this article, I invite my readers to go to fascinating world mother tongue. After reviewing the information provided here, you can get answers to the following questions:

What does the concept of hyperbole in literature include?
For what purpose is it used?
Do we often, without noticing it ourselves, use this

I decided to divide the article into three parts: first, to tell in more detail about the etymology of the word itself, then we will talk about the history and reasons for the emergence of the concept itself, and, finally, you will learn about the role of hyperbole in modern style.

Part 1. Etymology and modern definition words

So, first of all, let's delve into the history. From an etymological point of view, the word Greek origin"hyperbole" consists of two parts "hyper" and "bole". The first is translated into Russian as “over”, “through” or “too”, the second can be interpreted as “throw”, “throwing”, “throwing”. Since about the 18th century Latin the word "hyperbole" signified by "exaggeration" appears and begins to be widely used.

There is also an opposite term - litote. And if hyperbole in literature implies "exaggeration", then litotes, on the contrary, are used for deliberate understatement.

For example, phraseologisms “a sea of smells”, “an ocean of love”, “have not seen each other for a hundred years” can act as a hyperbole, “with a thimble”, “at hand” as a litote.

Part 2. Reasons for the emergence of the term

It is probably hard to imagine that the desire to exaggerate both the importance and physical features subject originated in the thinking of man in the days of the primitive communal system. Of course, the judgments of the first people on the planet differed significantly from the train of thought of today's people. In those distant times, there was simply no clear line between fiction and reality. existing concepts. As you know, many centuries ago, hunters animated the world around them, leaders, animals, natural phenomena. They gave them supernatural powers, for example, the incredible size, magic power, excessive dexterity and dodgy mind. Why? This process was simply inevitable, because. was the result of a huge dependence on the forces of nature, a misunderstanding of its laws, an inability to master everything that happens, or the inability to explain to oneself the causes of an event. As a result, there was fear, a feeling of defenselessness, dependence, and as a result - imaginary gratitude, admiration, surprise and exaggeration.

Part 3. Hyperbole. Literature classical and modern

In order to give the work artistic expressiveness, the authors try to use a variety of the most common among which are considered metaphors, comparisons, epithets and hyperbole. Currently, such as hyperbole is used, based on the interaction of the emotional and logical meanings of the same word.

I will give examples of hyperbole in the literature: “This has already been said a thousand times” (the number is exaggerated), “The enemies are smashed to smithereens” (quality), “He left, and the world ceased to exist for her” (emotions).

Sometimes it is very difficult not to confuse hyperbole with comparison or metaphor, since they also often compare two objects. Remember that hyperbole in literature always means exaggeration. Say, "His feet were as big as skis." At first glance, this example resembles a comparison, but remembering what the actual length of the skis is, you can understand that this is an exaggeration, which means hyperbole.

The author usually resorts to this stylistic device to enhance the impression or sharpen the image. Modern realities also need to use hyperbole in order to enhance the effect of influencing the imagination or attracting attention.