Abstract
I spent five years in Oxford under the guidance of Mark Smith. While there, I had countless one-on-one discussions, as well as intense language courses, with him. Mark taught me Demotic, patiently going through with me copies of religious and wisdom texts. His continuous guidance since 2000 has been a priceless source of influence and motivation in my academic career. Thank you, Mark, and I hope you enjoy this short article on a stylistic feature you have made sure to avoid in your writings: exaggeration!
Hyperbole, the scholarly term for “exaggeration,” has been a widely used figure of speech in