Other forms: hyped, hyping
Hype is loud, excited publicity that promises more than the thing can deliver. The trailer that shows every good moment in the film, the queue outside a shop for a phone that turns out to be last year's phone in a new colour.
Hype is a mass noun — the hype around the launch, all this hype — never 'a hype'. It is a verb too: studios hype a release, and hyped up means both over-advertised and over-excited. Two fixed phrases carry it: a thing lives up to the hype or fails to live up to the hype, and you are told not to believe the hype. The word is informal and slightly hostile, so calling a campaign hype says you do not trust it. Publicity is neutral; hype never is.
1nounhypeExaggerated publicity and excitement built up around something.
“The film never lived up to the hype.”
2verbpromoteTo promote something with exaggerated claims.
“The label hyped the album for months before anyone had heard a note.”
3adjectiveexcitedHyped: over-excited, or heavily promoted.
“The children were too hyped to sleep.”
Hype is what is left when you cut hyperbole in half. Hyperbole is the old rhetorical word for deliberate overstatement — the promise nobody could keep, the claim stretched past breaking — and the clipped version kept exactly that meaning while losing three syllables.
Clipping of hyperbole. a clipping of hyperbole.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA