Meaning of exaggerate in English

exaggerate

verb [ I or T ]

/ɪɡˈzædʒ.ə.reɪt/ us

/ɪɡˈzædʒ.ə.reɪt/

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to make something seem larger, more important, better, or worse than it really is:

be greatly exaggerated The threat of attack has been greatly exaggerated.

Don't exaggerate - it wasn't that expensive.

I'm not exaggerating - it was the worst meal I've ever eaten in my life.

Synonyms

emphasize
foreground 
highlight 
overplay
overstate
spotlight 

Opposites

downplay
minimize
understate

More examplesFewer examples

You shouldn't believe everything she says - she does tend to exaggerate.
The minister suggested that some leading environmentalists were exaggerating the issues somewhat.
She was a bit annoyed, but she wasn't furious - don't exaggerate.
I don't think it would be exaggerating to say that the composer's new work is a masterpiece.
He has exaggerated the whole event to make it sound rather more dramatic than it actually was.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Exaggerating & playing down

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Related words

exaggerated

exaggeratedly

(Definition of exaggerate from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

exaggerate | American Dictionary

exaggerate

verb [ I/T ]

/ɪɡˈzædʒ·əˌreɪt/

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to make something seem larger, more important, better, or worse than it really is:

[ T ] The media exaggerate the risks and benefits of research findings.

[ I ] I don’t want to exaggerate, but it was a dangerous situation.

exaggeration

noun [ C/U ] us

/ɪɡˌzædʒ·əˈreɪ·ʃən/

[ U ] It is no exaggeration to say that she saved my life.

(Definition of exaggerate from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of exaggerate

exaggerate

The tests would therefore exaggerate the importance of the differences.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The sharp spectral roll-off in this range exaggerates the ordinal error for a fixed abscissa.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

A woman who removed the device may not admit it or report it as an expulsion; she may exaggerate the seriousness of a side effect.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

They either invented whole new syndromes or exaggerated a few common symptoms to build fatal diseases out of minor distempers.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Accordingly, the so-called ' red peril ' was exaggerated to the utmost.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The progressive rock fanzine seems particularly amenable to the method, but is this to exaggerate its uniqueness?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This is a partial picture though, and tends to exaggerate the proportion of rural migrants who settled in urban areas.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The defendant healthcare professionals contended that the families greatly exaggerated both the severity of the patients' pain and the professional unresponsiveness to it.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This contains an element of truth but is exaggerated.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

By aping the discourse of nineteenth-century materialistic science, it acted out its hidden tensions, exaggerating them into unresolvable paradoxes.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The extraordinary stories that he invents or that he reports when he describes cities and regions are part of this tendency to exaggerate.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

They tended to exaggerate the novelty of the occasion or, at least, the aspects that distinguished it from those accorded to their colleagues.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

But a brief foray into prison literature suggests to me that the conceptual difficulties can easily be exaggerated.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To say the signs of critical thinking, writing, or reading mean that students are assured of political and material empowerment is to exaggerate matters.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of exaggerate?

Translations of exaggerate

in Chinese (Traditional)

誇張, 誇大, 對…言過其實…

Meaning of exaggerate in English

Related words

exaggerate | American Dictionary

exaggeration

Examples of exaggerate

Translations of exaggerate

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