In this paper, Herrero (2010) classifies tropes into two different groups, viz. simple tropes which comprise only one mental operation and complex tropes which are based on more than one operation. The author also discusses and exemplifies various cognitive operations, such as reversion, integration and accommodation, strengthening and mitigation. Moreover, this article highlights the crucial role played by metaphor and metonymy for the interpretation of several complex tropes: irony, oxymoron, overstatement, understatement, and euphemism. The overstatement I’m so dead! uttered to indicate great weariness makes use of a strengthening operation in combination with the metaphor DEATH IS REST, whereby a person with reduced consciousness and inactive appearance resembles a corpse. The strengthening operation involves intentional maximization of a situation or concept on the part of the speaker in order to increase certain contextual effects.