My students use the phrase "over exaggerate" often. It sounds just horrible to me, but I suppose one could make a case for it. WDYT? :0)
this sounds, to me, akin to the objections we often hear to expressions such as very unique and more perfect.
He wanted to make his record collection more complete, and You can improve the sketch by making the lines more perpendicular, are often criticized as illogical. Such criticism confuses pure logic or a mathematical ideal with the rough approximations that are frequently needed in ordinary language. Certainly in some contexts we should use words strictly logically; otherwise teaching mathematics would be impossible. But we often think in terms of a scale or continuum rather than in clearly marked either/or categories. Thus, we may think of a statement as either logically true or false, but we also know that there are degrees of truthfulness and falsehood. [AHD usage note]
and, these terms strike me as being even more absolute (: ) than does exaggerate. but perhaps I greatly overstate my case.
-joe (highly agitated) friday
I think that here again context is the key. Exaggerate is not an absolute so something can be more exaggerated than another. To which degree? Slightly more than just exaggerated! So it is an expression which I believe is valid in a colloquial sense. It is betterer.
Even uniquity can come in degrees. If something differs from everything else in one aspect it is unique. Something that differs from everything else in two aspects is more unique and if you have three unique things and the third differs from everything else in three or more aspects it is the most unique.
As olly says, exaggeration can come in degrees and there may be a level that is acceptable. If I've told you this once I've told you a thousand times. But If I said that I've told you this a googol times, that would be over exaggeration.
One google time of "over exaggerating" yields 1,740,000 hits, if that holds any water...
The phrase very unique is perfectly grammatical in that unique is an adjective being qualified by an adverb very. The perceived problem with it has to do with logic, not grammar.
Is is not also typical teenage-adolescent language fashion ? Here I often hear young people say things like 'mega exaggerating' or give me a 'mega double of'.... BTW, do they also write it or is it just spoken language?
are you kidding me? can you see today's yute texting 'mega exaggerating'?
No, texting no. Spoken language. Some people in this world still do it.