This list is so good, it might just break the internet
100 Hyperbole Examples That Are Out of This World
Updated on Mar. 28, 2025
Have you ever been so hungry you could eat a horse? Or so tired you could sleep for a million years? If so, congratulations—you’re familiar with hyperbole (even if you couldn’t define it to save your life). Hyperbole examples are all around you, but what, exactly, is hyperbole, why do we use it and how do these funny sayings shape the way we communicate?
I spoke to two linguistics experts to give me a crash course on hyperbole’s definition and use. Read on for the best article ever!
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What is a hyperbole?
A hyperbole is an exaggerated or extravagant statement used to express strong feelings or produce a strong impression, but it’s not intended to be taken literally, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Hyperbole is more than just exaggeration; it’s a deliberate overstatement used to make a point. “It is saying more than is factually warranted by the situation, e.g. calling a pimple ‘the end of the world,'” says Claudia Claridge, PhD, the chair of English linguistics at the University of Augsburg in Germany, who quite literally wrote the book on hyperbole. “There’s normally a more literal or down-to-earth expression that one could use instead of the hyperbole. The speaker, in principle, knows that they are saying too much, and they don’t intend to lie—that’s why hyperboles are often blatant, so that they can’t be taken as lies.”
We use hyperbole “for comedic effects, to make our points more emphatically or just to stress what we’re saying,” says Grant Barrett, a linguist, lexicographer and co-host of A Way with Words, a national radio show about language. “We say things like, ‘I worked a million hours last week.’ We all know you didn’t work a million hours because there aren’t a million hours in a week. So we do this, and it works. It successfully brings across our point.”
There are a bunch of different ways you can be hyperbolic. “You can exaggerate, overstate or understate,” he says. “You can do hyperbolic by saying, ‘That is the tiniest car I’ve ever seen; I could put it in my pocket.’ Well, you couldn’t put the automobile in your pocket because it’s actually a real, life-size automobile.”
We use hyperbole to make or emphasize a point, show contrast between two ideas, grab the reader’s attention, set the scene for the story, perk up an otherwise bland description and add humor to the situation. “Hyperbole is a kind of rhetorical device, and it belongs to this larger category of literary and rhetorical devices dating back to the great rhetoric of the ancient Greeks,” Barrett points out.
The world’s best hyperbole examples
There are a gazillion examples of hyperbole out there. (Like that sentence!) As Claridge points out, “everyday language is not awfully inventive: We all tend to use fairly similar hyperboles.” Here are 100 examples of hyperbole you may come across in everyday discourse or while reading a book or watching a movie.
Hyperbole in everyday language
- He has the memory of an elephant.
- He runs like the wind!
- He’s as skinny as a toothpick.
- He’s as strong as an ox.
- His brain is the size of a peanut.
- This new car goes from zero to 100 in a millisecond.
- I can’t live without you.
- I could sleep for a week.
- I cried a river.
- I died of embarrassment.
- I had to walk to the ends of the Earth to find it!
- I haven’t seen you in ages.
- I love you to the moon and back.
- I’m dying of laughter.
- I’m so excited, I could die!
- I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse.
- I’m so tired, I could sleep for a million years.
- I’m as thirsty as a camel.
- I slept like a rock.
- I swear my head is going to explode.
- I thought that lecture would never end.
- It’s a jungle out there.
- It’s been raining for 40 days and 40 nights.
- It’s raining cats and dogs.
- It’s so hot, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk.
- I’ve been running around like a headless chicken all day.
- I’ve seen that movie a thousand times.
- I’ve told you a million times: Pick up your dirty socks!
- I walked a million miles to get here.
- I was so ashamed, the earth swallowed me up.
- My feet are killing me.
- My grandfather is older than dirt.
- My parents are going to kill me when they find out.
- My phone is blowing up with messages.
- New York is the city that never sleeps.
- Our kitchen reno cost us an arm and a leg.
- Our house cost a zillion dollars.
- She eats like a bird.
- She’s as old as the hills.
- She can hear a pin drop a mile away.
- She’s so sweet, you could get a cavity from talking to her.
- She talks a mile a minute.
- She walks as slow as a turtle.
- She was so angry, she was spitting bullets.
- That documentary went on forever.
- That math quiz was the easiest in the history of the world.
- That Olympian runs faster than the speed of light.
- The line at the bank was a mile long.
- The whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.
- This book bag weighs a ton.
- This booze-free town is dry as a desert.
- This is the worst day of my entire life!
- This movie is the best thing ever made.
- We’re never gonna get there!
Hyperbole in literature and film
- “Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow, / You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout / Till you have drenched the steeples, drowned the cocks!” —King Lear by William Shakespeare
- “His horses are the finest and strongest that I have ever seen, they are whiter than snow and fleeter than any wind that blows.” —Iliad by Homer
- “I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / Till China and Africa meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain, / And the salmon sing in the street.” —”As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden
- “I’m in a glass case of emotion!” —Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
- “I’m so so sorry. It’s inexcusable. I’ll be killing myself after the service if it’s any consolation.” —Four Weddings and a Funeral
- “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.” —A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- “My senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight and a thousand sights of beauty.” —Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- “Parting is all we know of heaven, / And all we need of hell.” —”My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close” by Emily Dickinson
- “Sir, I love you more than [words] can wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty, beyond what can be valued, rich or rare.” —King Lear by William Shakespeare
- “Such heavenly touches ne’er touched earthly faces.” —”Sonnet 17″ by William Shakespeare
- “To infinity … and beyond!” —Toy Story
- “To numbers that the stars outrun, / And all the Atoms in the Sun.” —”A Pastoral Courtship” by Thomas Randolph
- “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?” —Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” —Jaws
- “You sit on a throne of lies!” —Elf
Work-related hyperbole examples
- Half my life is spent in pointless meetings.
- After that reaming-out, I’m about an inch tall.
- I answer a thousand emails each day.
- If I make one more spreadsheet, I might actually turn into Excel.
- I have a million things to do before lunch.
- I haven’t taken a break in 100 years.
- I’m buried under a mountain of paperwork.
- I’ve been so busy that I don’t remember what daylight looks like.
- I’ve been working my fingers to the bone.
- I’ve been working 24/7.
- My boss expects me to be in 10 places at once.
- My inbox is a black hole—emails go in, but they never come out.
- One more last-minute request, and my brain is going to explode.
- They want this done yesterday.
- This meeting is so long, I might hit retirement before it ends.
- This project is never going to end.
Food-related hyperbole examples
- Aunt Mary’s Thanksgiving turkey could have fed an army.
- I ate a mountain of pancakes for breakfast.
- I could drink a whole vat of lemonade.
- I could smell that pizza from two blocks away.
- I have enough leftovers to feed a small country.
- I’ve got a truckload of snacks for the road.
- My mom bakes the best cookies in the universe.
- That chili was so spicy, my tongue caught fire.
- The burger at the diner was bigger than my head.
- The coconut cake at that new bakery is to die for.
- These fries are so good, I could eat a million of them.
- This coffee is strong enough to wake the dead.
- This ice cream sundae is out of this world.
- This pickle is so sour, my face is stuck in a pucker!
- This steak is so rare that it’s still mooing.
FAQs
When shouldn’t you use hyperbole?
“Hyperbole is out of place where it goes against genre or register convention,” says Claridge. For example, “the whole area of the law, where precision and clarity is very important, clearly discourages hyperbole.”
That prohibition also goes for technical writing and recipes—with the possible exception of advice like “your pasta water should be as salty as the sea” (a statement I wholeheartedly support as a pretty good home cook with a food-focused Instagram account).
In addition, “any instance where hyperbole is used for manipulative and propagandist purposes is certainly something we wouldn’t want to see,” according to Claridge. “In these cases, it would be important that there are people pointing out the strategy, in order to defuse it.”
What hyperbolic phrases should you skip?
Sometimes sayings just go out of fashion. Perhaps the phrase has lost its relevance or meaning over time, it now seems offensive or insensitive, or it’s become cliché. Here are some old-fashioned examples of hyperbole and modern versions you should go with instead.
- Outdated: “He has more money than Carter has liver pills.”
Modern: “He has more cash than a Vegas casino on fight night.”
- Outdated: “He’s got more stories than the Empire State Building.”
Modern: “He’s got more stories than Netflix.”
- Outdated: “He’s so slow, you could time him with a sundial.”
Modern: “He was moving so slowly, my phone completed a software update.”
- Outdated: “I’d rather eat my own hat than do that.”
Modern: “I’d rather chug a bottle of hot sauce than do that.”
- Outdated: “I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age!”
Modern: “I haven’t seen you in forever.”
- Outdated: “I’ll be there with bells on!”
Modern: “I’ll be there, dressed like it’s the Met Gala.”
- Outdated: “I wouldn’t do that for all the tea in China.”
Modern: “You couldn’t pay me enough to do that—even if you threw in free Wi-Fi for life.”
- Outdated: “She’s got more nerve than a brass monkey.”
Modern: “She’s got more nerve than a firefighter rushing into a burning building.”
- Outdated: “That baby’s lungs are stronger than a town crier’s.”
Modern: “That baby’s lungs are so strong, they could headline a rock concert.”
- Outdated: “Their sense of direction is so bad, they couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag with a lantern and a compass.”
Modern: “They’d get lost even with GPS.”
So although you may never actually walk a million miles or cry a river of tears, one thing is for sure: Language would be boring without hyperbole. And that, my friends, is no exaggeration.
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Sources:
- Grant Barrett, linguist, lexicographer and co-host of A Way with Words; phone interview, March 18, 2025
- Claudia Claridge, chair of English linguistics at the University of Augsburg and author of Hyperbole in English; email interview, March 18, 2025
- Oxford English Dictionary: “Hyperbole”
- Hyperbole in English by Claudia Claridge
- Hyperboles: The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought by Christopher D. Johnson
