Exaggerated

How to spell exaggerated

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce exaggerated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exaggerated mean?

1. adjectiveMade to seem larger, greater, or more important than is actually true.
2. verbRepresented something as larger or more extreme than it really was.

Exaggerated in a sentence

• adjective

  The brochure gave an exaggerated impression of how spacious the apartment was.

• verb

  The witness later admitted that she had exaggerated the speed of the car.

• adjective

  His exaggerated account of the delay made the journey sound far worse than it had been.

• verb

  The salesman exaggerated the savings to push the customer toward a quick decision.

Where does exaggerated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb exaggerare, which literally meant 'to heap up' or 'to pile high'. It was built from the prefix ex-, used here as an intensifier meaning 'thoroughly', and aggerare, 'to heap up', which in turn comes from agger, a 'heap' or 'pile of earth', the sort of mound the Romans threw up to build a rampart. From the idea of piling material ever higher came the figurative sense of magnifying something beyond its real size, and that is the meaning that survived. English adopted the verb in the mid-1500s, at first in the literal Latin sense of amassing, then quickly settling into the modern sense of overstating or inflating. The doubled g, which is the spelling's chief trap, is a direct fossil of that buried Latin agger, so picturing a heaped-up pile (gg) is a useful way to remember it.

How the word is built

• ex- (thoroughly)
• agger- (heap, from Latin agger 'pile')
• -ate (verb)
• -ed (past/adjective ending)