Hyperboles are exaggerated forms of figures of speech which are often used to make a statement extravagant in its meaning. It brings out a subtle form of irony or a sudden jolt of fun and surprise to the contextual meaning of the sentence. Such sentences exude boldness and deliberate overstatement especially when in the poetic forms which is why this powerful expression can make even the impossible 'seem' possible with its skilful approach. E.g. 'I'd give up my fortune to see her smile.' The literal meaning seems lost here with exaggerated figure of speech as 'giving up ones fortune' for a 'smile'.
a. List of hyperbole
Here's a list of hyperboles to exemplify and help you grow familiar with the most common ones used in our day to day life.
* When she got pregnant her tummy kept blowing up like a huge air balloon.
* I have already tried a thousand times to impress her.
* Catch a falling star.
* I can submerge drowning deep in her alluring blue-green eyes.
* The hooligan kept barking and wagging his tail after the gentleman.
* I'm so hungry I can nearly empty the cafes storage for burgers.
* She runs faster than the speed of light.
* Roses bloomed as she walked past me.
* Your dog is so ugly; we have to pay the fleas to live on him.
* Your brother is so fat, elephants throw peanuts at him.
* You snore louder than a freight train.
* It's raining cats and dogs
* He cried buckets.
* My back weighs a ton!
* I'm a beast when it comes to eating food.
* My shoes are millions of years old.
* It takes him seconds to kiss a girl.
* My father's lecture on money savings lasted three weeks last evening.
* His house is older than the Egyptian civilization.
b. Hyperbole in a poetry
Kubla Khan
In Xanadu did Kubla khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
In poems the poets imaginations knows no bounds. It is this world where even the impossible becomes possible, dead become alive and topsy-turvy things play jingle. And this is linguistically possible through a wonder element called hyperbole. Hyperboles in sentences or paragraphs of any story or article may be moderately used but in poetry it reaches to immeasurable heights and is free to run through the stanzas with greater intensity. In the above mentioned stanza of the famous poem 'Kubla khan' by well known poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we can find terrific examples of hyperboles. Here in this stanza, the 'dome' is made to 'decree', the 'river' is made to 'run', the 'caverns' are 'measureless' and the 'sea' is made extravagant as if the rest of the seas have sun hidden inside them.
Again there are tones to be associated such as funny, satirical, ironical, sad or romantic. Hyperbole tells us about the kind of tone that the poet portrays here.