exaggerate

From Latin exaggeratus, past participle of exaggerare (“to heap up, increase, enlarge, magnify, amplify, exaggerate”), from ex (“out, up”) + aggerare (“to heap up”), from agger (“a pile, heap, mound, dike, mole, pier, etc.”), from aggerere, adgerere (“to bring together”), from ad (“to, toward”) +‎ gerere (“to carry”).

• IPA^(key): /ɛɡˈzæ.d͡ʒə.ɹeɪt/, /ɪɡˈzæ.d͡ʒə.ɹeɪt/

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• Hyphenation: ex‧ag‧ger‧ate

exaggerate (third-person singular simple present exaggerates, present participle exaggerating, simple past and past participle exaggerated)

1. To overstate, to describe more than is fact.

   I've told you a billion times not to exaggerate!

   He said he'd slept with hundreds of girls, but I know he's exaggerating. The real number is about ten.

• big up
• overexaggerate
• overstate
• hyperbolize

• (overstate): belittle, downplay, understate, trivialize

• exaggeration

• exaggerate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• exaggerate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
• exaggerate at OneLook Dictionary Search

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ek.saɡ.ɡeˈraː.te/, [ɛks̠äɡːɛˈräːt̪ɛ]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ek.sad.d͡ʒeˈra.te/, [eɡzädː͡ʒeˈräːt̪e]

exaggerāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of exaggerō