hyperbolic

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   enlarged beyond truth or reasonableness

   The hyperbolic statements of the candidates were appealing.

2. 2
   adj

   of or relating to a hyperbola

   I produced some hyperbolic functions to explain the data.

3. 3
   adj

   Using hyperbole: exaggerated.

   At the risk of being slightly hyperbolic, the fourth season of The Simpsons is the greatest thing in the history of the universe.

4. 4
   adj

   Of a perceived color, having a saturation exceeding 100%.

   Using the techniques already explored, we can contrive to activate a coding triplet in any one of those four extremal corners. If one fixates at length on a pale blue-green stimulus, as in Figure 18, and then refixates on an already maximally saturated orange surface, then the resituated f/p vector will yield an activation triplet within the farthest corner of the cube, beyond the limits of the classical spindle. The H–J theory of our internal color representations entails that one should there find a circular after-image of a hyperbolic orange, an orange that is more "ostentatiously orange" than any (non-self-luminous) orange you have ever seen, or ever will see, as the objective color of a physical object. Row 1 of Figure 19 will allow you, once more, to test such a prediction for yourself.

From Latin hyperbolic(us), from Ancient Greek ὑπερβολικός (huperbolikós). First attested in the 15th century. By surface analysis, hyperbol(e) + -ic.

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