I had a conversation with someone that had just returned from Maine recently. He said it was really cold there. I asked, “How cold was it?” He said, “It was so cold that…” Well, you get the idea, he went on to exaggerate making the cold the worst weather in recorded history. A lying tale like that is often called a whopper.
Well, as I often do, I got to thinking about our language… we all exaggerate sometimes and exaggeration is sometimes called hyperbole in language. Someone by the name of B.A. Boykin wrote, “Outside the realm of both probability and possibility, the world of lies is the world of supermen who perform miracles midway between nonsense and magic and who inhabit a land of giant vegetables and delightfully preposterous canny or composite features.”
These “whoppers” have inspired Liars’ Clubs. Members of the clubs try to outdo each other in dreaming up the most fantastic, impossible and creative yarns.
I guess the opposite of exaggeration is the understatement. Most everyone has heard about Mark Twain’s famous reaction to an obituary notice prematurely announcing his death. He said, “The report of my death is slightly exaggerated.” “Slightly exaggerated” is an understatement. Understatements are often made as an attempt at humor. Like someone going through all kinds of physical dangers and emerging battered and bruised. “I had a bit of bad luck” might be a classic understatement.
I’m not sure why I got off on this track today — I was just thinking about people I know and a lot of them fall into the category of exaggerators or those that tend to understate things. And they kind of both fall into the “tall tales” category. I think that’s a good thing — the world would be boring without them.
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