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title: ★★★ Olympiad: hyperbole and downplaying puzzles — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics
description: «★★★ Olympiad: hyperbole and downplaying puzzles», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Each one hides a trap: a real number next to a fake one, a word that is hyperbole in one place and plain truth in another
---

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# ★★★ Olympiad: hyperbole and downplaying puzzles

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Lesson 55 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 9 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/).

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- [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/1/) — Each one hides a trap: a real number next to a fake one, a word that is hyperbole in one place and plain truth in another, two kinds of talk stacked on top of each other, or a dialect word that sounds like something else.
- [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/3/) — One sentence, two numbers: 1950 is a fact, the thousand is a moan.
- [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/4/) — The olympiad pupil keeps the fact and throws away the moan.
- [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/7/) — In one sentence one number can be real and another fake: «Gran has told me a thousand times she was born in 1950» gives a real year (1950) and a hyperbolic count (a thousand), so in 2000 she was 50.
- [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/10/) — «Over 1 million people visited the museum this year» is a measured number tied to a place and a time; «A MILLION reasons to love summer!» is a feeling dressed up as a number.
- [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/11/) — The same word can be hyperbole or truth: «starving» after school lunch is hyperbole, but in a history book about a famine, where people had no food for weeks, it is literal.
- [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/12/) — In Yorkshire, «nesh» means someone who feels the cold easily, and «nobbut a bit fresh» means «only slightly cool»; a grandad saying «you're nesh, you» is teasing.
- [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/14/) — «I may have slightly broken the window» about a smashed window is downplaying to avoid trouble; the honest «I broke the window» is better.
- [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/55-olympiad-hyperbole-and-downplaying-puzzles/16/) — «Could be worse» after losing 6–0 is downplaying to cope; it went badly, and «next time» is a kind reply.

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