If something is overblown, people have puffed it up: the praise, the fear, the style, or the story is bigger than the thing itself. An overblown claim makes a small fact sound huge. An overblown reaction is more drama than the moment needed. It is a critic’s word — newspapers, reviews, arguments — and it is not friendly. You use it to cut something down to size. Though actually, we also call a flower overblown when it has opened too far and is past its best; that older picture of “blown too much” is still sitting under the “exaggerated” sense. It is not the same as blown over, which is what we say when a storm, or a fuss, has passed and gone.