litotes /LIY-toh-teez/. noun. A figure of speech using understatement to express an affirmative by negating its opposite. The description sounds more complicated than the simply reality in use: it is basically the opposite of hyperbole. “Warren Buffett isn’t too bad off,” is an example, as would be John Coltrane saying he “played the sax a little.” If you’ve ever used a phrase like, “he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed,” then you employed litotes. From Greek litotes (simplicity); from litos (small). See also: meiosis, which includes understatement of other kinds.
A few example of litotes in use:
“For that matter, I, too,
lost someone in the war at Troy—my brother,
and no mean soldier, whom you must have known…”
(Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald)
“In her days of courtship Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure…” (James Joyce)
“Ferris does not have what we consider to be an exemplary attendance record.” (Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)
“Sir, it is not unreasonable; for when people see a man absurd in what they understand, they may conclude the same of him in what they do not understand.” (Robert Boswell)
“Really, if you forgive the precious litotes, I am an executant of no mean calibre. In my imagination the tears are running down my face, on to my fingers, on to the lush ivories.” (Lawrence Durrell)
“I am … a Jew of Tarsus …, a citizen of no mean city…” (Saint Paul)
‘You didn’t act very sensibly, did you, sir?’
‘In literary circles, Sergeant, that is what is called “litotes”.’
(Colin Dexter)
What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures.” (Herman Melville)
‘Sue, a question. The class has in its last lesson been taught the difference between a simile and a metaphor. Now, which grammatical term would you say best described the comparison between the size of a man’s hands and the size of his tackle?’
‘Is there a grammatical term called boasting?’
‘There’s that term for comparing the smaller to the greater. The part to the whole. Litotes? Hendiadys? Anacoluthon?’
‘They all sound like Greek holiday resorts to me.’
(Julian Barnes)