Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration for emphasis or effect. The statement is not meant to be taken literally.

“I’ve told you a million times” does not record a literal count; it expresses frustration. Love poetry claims that a beloved’s eyes outshine the sun; tall tales stretch events beyond possibility. Hyperbole can be comic, passionate, or contemptuous depending on context. It works because the audience recognizes the exaggeration and translates it back into an intensified version of the truth.

Overused hyperbole loses force and can make a speaker seem unreliable or juvenile. Used sparingly and with inventiveness, it energizes language. In rhetoric and literature it joins other figures of speech as a way of saying more than literal statement allows. Children employ it naturally; skilled writers recover that energy with greater control.

When language stretches the truth in order to make a point felt, the figure is hyperbole.