Exaggerate

How to spell exaggerate

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce exaggerate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exaggerate mean?

1. verbTo represent something as larger, better, or worse than it really is; to overstate.

Exaggerate in a sentence

• Try not to exaggerate the story.

• He tends to exaggerate when telling stories.

• Don't exaggerate the difficulty of the task.

Where does exaggerate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin exaggerare, which literally meant 'to heap up' or 'to pile high'. It was built from the prefix ex-, here acting as an intensifier meaning 'thoroughly', and the noun agger, meaning a 'heap', 'mound', or 'embankment' of earth. A Roman who exaggerated something was, in the original sense, piling it ever higher, and from that physical image of mounding up came the figurative idea of magnifying or overstating. English adopted the word in the sixteenth century, first in the literal sense of heaping or accumulating, before the modern meaning of overstating took hold. The buried double g, which traces straight back to agger, is the very spot where modern writers stumble, since the sound gives no hint that two g letters are needed.

How the word is built

• ex- (thoroughly)
• agger (heap, pile)
• -ate (verb)