President Biden often introduces or concludes a remark by saying “that’s not hyperbole, I mean it literally.” See, e.g., https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/08/19/remarks-by-president-biden-during-keynote-address-at-the-democratic-national-committee-convention-chicago-il/. It is a rather sad state of affairs when the president of the United States has to preface or conclude a remark by vouching for its truthfulness. 

The term hyperbole originates from the Greek word for excess. The dictionary defines the term as “a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect.” In Persian, the term for exaggerated speech is lāf and it is often paired with the synonym gazāf to produce the term lāf-o-gazāf. In Farsi, one may use also the Arabic-rooted words like eghrāq and mobāleqeh to convey the same idea. If you want to insult another for their laf-zani or ghazaf-gui, you would use the tern gondeh-gouzi (breaking a big wind/fart) mostly in the sense of bragging.

While the term hyperbole is used in conjunction with speech, one cannot help but to note that its cousin has found its way in sports-talk. Claude Julien, the former coach of the Boston Bruins hockey tem (2007-2017) was fond of the term “embellishment” as a substitute for the common terms like “diving” or “flopping” that describes an opposing team member’s attempt at getting the attention of the referee by faking or exaggerating an infraction in order to draw a penalty. In Iran of my youth the term for exaggerating a foul was film bazi karadan (lit. play/movie acting), devoid of reality, faking.

In our daily lives we often resort to hyperbole. ‘Sad bar be to goftam in kar ro nakon’ was what I would say to my son for the umpteenth time not to do something, which would make this last admonition the one hundred-and- first time. Of course, it is possible that I may have repeated the same admonition one hundred times before, but that would be unlikely as after the third time I would have given up and resorted to other means of persuasion (khar fahm kardan)! In this case, my utterance was meant to be hyperbolic. But if one would have fact- checked my statement and it had turned out that I had made the statement only twenty times before then technically I would have been deemed a liar. In my case, the technical lie would have not had much consequence as nobody (maybe only my son) would have cared. Hyperbolic or embellished remarks by public figures is something else.

Hyperbole in and of itself is not a lie, but it can become so if it the statement is manifestly so embellished that it strains credulity. The consequences of telling a unbelievable fish-story can be catastrophic. Hillary Clinton, First Lady of the United States, had traveled to Bosnia in 1996. During her run for the presidential nomination of her party in March of 2008 she remarked publicly that she and her daughter had run for cover under hostile fire shortly after her plane landed in Tuzla under sniper fire. The narrative turned out to be false, as the evidence unearthed by the media showed that her arrival was uneventful. In the next month, she confessed that she had made a mistake and that she had a different memory of the landing than what the press had unearthed. Famously, she said: “So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I'm human.” https://www.reuters.com/article/economy/clinton-calls-bosnia-sniper-fire-story-a-mistake-idUSN25408114/; https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/02/brian-williams-false-memories-of-rpg-fire-in-iraq-will-nbc-hold-its-anchor-to-the-same-standard-it-held-hillary-clinton.html

Brian Williams, the once-celebrated anchor at NBC News, was a “war correspondent” with the United States military operations in Iraq in 2003. In 2013, he appeared as a guest on the television show “Late Show with David Letterman” and told the story that he was on one of the several Chinook helicopters that were fired upon by rocket-propelled grenade and AK-47 rifles. The story proved false, a lie. So, two years later he publicly apologized for falsely claiming that he had been in such a scenario. The price for his bombast: The pink slip. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-brian-williams-controversy-suspension-20150210-htmlstory.html.

Moral of the story: As the saying goes -“If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit” but be weary that the bullshit part of the story may have a very limited shelf-life in a media-savvy society.