When I was a sophomore in high school, I was taught that hyperbole is the word for both overstatement and understatement for effect. Since I’ve gotten out of high school, no one has ever used “hyperbole” to mean understatement, only overstatement.
So, was my high school English teacher correct about the meaning of hyperbole, or is the rest of the world? Given that I expect it’s the rest of the world, is there an equivalent word for “understatement for effect”?
Droll roughly means understatement for effect.
Hyperbole is (AFAIK) just overstatement. You could use the term meiosis, but plain ol’ understatement is the term us regular folks use.
I’m a biologist. I’d really screw with people’s brains if I used the word meiosis to mean understatement.
Of course, I like screwing with people’s brains…
It’s not uncommon for people to use litotes for understated effect.
So you’re a mad biologist.
Only when studying for comps.
A really great exchange from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Komarr:
“So they were mad scientists?”
“No, just irritated engineers.”
But is that the singular form or the plural form? The Wiki article used it as a singular. Would the pure plural be litoteses?
Is it like the singular Kudos which has been “made into” the plural form by repeated misuse?
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :
Hyperbole \Hyper"boLe, n. [L., fr. Gr?, prop., an
overshooting, excess, fr. Gr. ? to throw over or beyond;
"yep`r over + ? to throw. See Hyper-, Parable, and cf.
Hyperbola.] (Rheta.)
A figure of speech in which the expression is an evident
exaggeration of the meaning intended to be conveyed, or by
which things are represented as much greater or less, better
or worse, than they really are; a statement exaggerated
fancifully, through excitement, or for effect.
[1913 Webster]
By that definition, some things can be hyperbole when exaggeratedly less than normal.
“Silent Cal never said three words together.”
Check many more dictionaries here http://dictionary.langenberg.com/
Both. Like sheep, litotes is both singular and plural. Technically, it’s the name of a single technique, so you would not have two or three litotes in an essay, but two or three instances of [the use of] litotes.
Deadpan is close, but not exactly right. More in the delivery than the content.
A good example, Chevy Chase in Caddyshack:
“I feel like a hundred bucks.”
I’ve only once heard “litotes” used in conversation. As I recall, the person pronounced it as: lie-tote-eeze, with the stress on the 2nd syllable. Is that correct?
Yes.
This is all really interesting, and I appreciate it. I’m glad to know that hyperbole may, in fact, be about both under- and overstatement and I’m glad to have learned a whole bunch of new words.
I’ll be extra glad when I can find away to use “meiosis” in a gramatically correct fashion with a fellow biologist, though.
I think it was closer to this :
Impsec officer : “They’re Komarran terrorists ! Madmen ! You can’t negotiate with them !”
< Some lines where Miles contemplates his lack of success negotiating with madmen >
Miles : “They’re not mad terrorists. Not even mad scientists; merely very upset engineers.”
I disagree with the OP’s teacher. I suspect that the teacher was confusing understatement with overstatement of a negative characteristic. If one is suggesting that a thing has little of a particular characteristic, it is hyperbole to say that it has even less of that characteristic.
What isn’t hyperbole is to represent that a thing has less of a characteristic in order to emphasise that the thing has more of it, which is the essence of understatement for effect.
The essence is of hyperbole is exaggeration. Indeed if one reads through the various definitions given given here one can see that hyperbole and exaggeration are essentially synonymous. Note that several sources on that page give “understatement” as the antonym of hyperbole.
To continue with the example given by According to Pliny, “Silent Cal never said three words together” is overstatement, not understatement. It is not an understatement of his taciturnity, it is an overstatement of it. An understatement of his taciturnity would be “Silent Cal talks maybe just a little less than most people”
My understanding of litotes was that it referred only to that horrible rhetorical device of emphasising something by saying it isn’t its opposite. Like “He isn’t the worst guitarist I have ever heard,” meaning, rather, that he is the best.