exaggerate [M16th] To exaggerate was originally ‘to pile up, accumulate’, and later ‘to make much of, emphasize’. It comes from Latin exaggerare ‘to heap up’, from agger ‘heap’. Mark Twain is usually credited with saying, in response to an incorrect story that he had died, ‘Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated’. In fact, he said ‘The report of my death was an exaggeration’—in the New York Journal, on 2 June 1897.