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Understatement is an expression of lesser strength than what the speaker or writer actually means or than what is normally expected. It is the opposite of embellishment or exaggeration, and is used for emphasis, irony, hedging, or humor. A particular form of understatement using negative syntax is called litotes.
Understatement – a form of irony, sometimes in the form of litotes, in which something is represented as less than it really is, with the intent of drawing attention to and emphasizing the opposite meaning. Universal audience – an audience consisting of all humankind. Utterance – statement that could contain meaning about one's own person.
Litotes: emphasizing the magnitude of a statement by denying its opposite. Malapropism: using a word through confusion with a word that sounds similar. Meiosis: use of understatement, usually to diminish the importance of something. Merism: type of synecdoche referring to two or more contrasting parts to describe it's whole
The French actress Sarah Bernhardt was considered insufficiently understated in English terms. Photograph by Félix Nadar, c. 1864. This attitude of understatement was exemplified by a comment upon Sarah Bernhardt's violent depiction of Cleopatra in the 1891 play of that title: "How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear Queen!"
The thing is, to state the obvious, the man now in the Oval Office is the polar opposite on pretty much every single word of that. But perhaps, some ponder, all this shouldn't be overstated.
To say he’s a force would be an understatement. 7. Vickie Nauman ... At Bandcamp, familiarity and nostalgia do not rule, and its vitality is the opposite of Spotify and YouTube Music. Those ...
Walter plays her opposite Steve Coogan in a new two-part Channel 4 docudrama, Brian and Maggie, ... Different is an understatement. Far from taking a generalised approach, Walter brings a screw ...
In rhetoric, litotes (/ l aɪ ˈ t oʊ t iː z, ˈ l aɪ t ə t iː z /, US: / ˈ l ɪ t ə t iː z /), [1] also known classically as antenantiosis or moderatour, is a figure of speech and form of irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, often incorporating double negatives for effect.