EXAGGERATE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Exaggerate

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/ɪgzˈædʒərˌeɪt/ Listen

verb

Exaggerate v. t. (past & past part. exaggerated; pres. part. exaggerating)

To heap up; to accumulate. (Obs.) "Earth exaggerated upon them (oaks and firs)."

To amplify; to magnify; to enlarge beyond bounds or the truth; to delineate extravagantly; to overstate the truth concerning. "A friend exaggerates a man's virtues."

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Etymology of 'Exaggerate'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Exaggerate" Quotes from Famous Books

... their holy influence. This state of things ought not to have been brought upon us. The reverent reading of the Bible alone would never have led us into such straits. It is the old story of all human reverence. That which we revere, we exaggerate. Glamor gathers around it. The symbol is identified with the spiritual reality. The image becomes an idol. The wonderful thing becomes a fetish. So we end in an irrational reverence of that which is worthy ...

— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... enthusiasm to the support of a clearly defined purpose. They had counted the cost and made their choice; and every instinct of proud and self-contained men disposed them to minimize the difficulties which they encountered in the New World and to exaggerate those which they had overcome in the Old. Having staked their judgment on the wisdom of the venture, they were bound to be justified in the event. To admit that life on the physical and moral frontier was less than they had imagined would be a humiliating confession ...

— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... see from the welcomes given to him by great official personages, that these remarks do not in the least exaggerate the feeling created all over the country by the activities of The Army. Had The General merely made great proposals he would only have been looked upon in the generally favourable way in which men naturally regard every prospector of benevolent ...

— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... relative proportions. Worst of all, if I may be permitted to say so, they were intended to boost something in particular. Boosting is a very unhandsome thing. Advancing enterprise is a very handsome thing, but to exaggerate local merits in order to create disproportion in the general development is not a particularly handsome thing or a particularly intelligent thing. A city cannot grow on the face of a great state like a mushroom on that one spot. Its roots are ...

— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... survey of Arthur's fashionable attire, "I should say he might do fairly well in a gent's furnishing store in one of those damn cities." The old man was not unfeeling—far from it; he had simply been educated by long years of experience out of any disposition to exaggerate the unimportant in the facts of life. "He'll be better off and more useful as a clerk than he would be as a pattern of damnfoolishness and snobbishness. So, Hiram was right anyway I look at it, and no matter how it comes out. But—it did take ...

— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

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