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"litotes"
Definition: A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "plainness, simplicity"
Examples:
- "The grave's a fine a private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace."
(Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")
- "We are not amused."
(Attributed to Queen Victoria)
- "'Not a bad day's work on the whole,' he muttered, as he quietly took off his mask, and his pale, fox-like eyes glittered in the red glow of the fire. 'Not a bad day's work.'"
(Baroness Emmuska Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905)
- "for life's not a paragraph
And death I think is no parenthesis"
(e.e. cummings, "since feeling is first")
- "What we know partakes in no small measure of the nature of what has so happily been called the unutterable or ineffable, so that any attempt to utter or eff it is doomed to fail, doomed, doomed to fail."
(Samuel Beckett)
- "We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all."
(Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 20, 1989)
- "We're all being lobotomized by this country's most influential industry! It's just thrown in the towel on any endeavor to do anything that doesn't include the courting of twelve-year-old boys. Not even the smart twelve-year-olds--the stupid ones! The idiots--of which there are plenty, thanks in no small measure to this network! So why don't you just change the channel? Turn off the TV. Do it right now. Go ahead."
(Judd Hirsch playing Wes Mendell in the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, 2006)
- "I'm not doing this for my health."
(O.J. Simpson, in a paid appearance at a horror comic book convention)
 Pronunciation: LI-toe-teez |
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