Overblown means exaggerated or made to seem more important, serious, or dramatic than it really is. When someone describes a problem as overblown, they're saying people are making too big a deal out of it.

If a student trips in the hallway and someone starts spreading rumors that they “totally wiped out and crashed into everything,” that's an overblown version of what actually happened. When a news headline screams about a “catastrophic” snowstorm that turns out to be just three inches, the danger was overblown.

The word suggests something has been puffed up or inflated beyond its true size or significance, like blowing up a balloon until it's stretched tight and enormous. You might hear someone say the fears about a new school policy were overblown after it turned out to work just fine, or that a movie's special effects were overblown, meaning they were so excessive that they became ridiculous instead of impressive.

Overblown doesn't mean completely false. The thing being described exists, but someone has amplified it beyond reason. When your little brother tells your parents you “destroyed” his toy when you barely bumped it, he's giving them an overblown account of what happened.