Litotes

Litotes is understatement that affirms something by denying its opposite ('not bad', 'no small achievement'), so the reader arrives at the positive meaning by way of the negative.

The reviews were not unkind. Two negatives resolving into a mild positive, and the mildness is doing something a direct statement could not: it suggests a speaker who is choosing not to say more.

Litotes examples

• Not bad. No small feat. Hardly a disaster. Not without merit. He was no fool. The everyday forms.
• I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city. Paul, in Acts 21, King James Bible. Why it works: no mean city claims an important one while sounding modest, which is exactly what a man under arrest needs.
• The crossing was not comfortable, said by someone who has just described a storm. Why it works: it lands harder than the crossing was terrible, because the reader supplies the missing intensity and believes their own conclusion.

Litotes in dialogue

Litotes is the engine of understatement, and understatement is often the stronger claim. In dialogue it is characterisation before it is anything else. A character who says I have had better weeks about a catastrophe is telling you how much they are willing to show. That makes litotes a natural fit for subtext and for oblique dialogue, where nobody says the thing directly.

Its opposite is hyperbole, and it is a mild relative of irony, since it also means more than it says.

Two limits

• The reader must see the gap. Litotes needs the facts first. Not ideal after a described disaster is funny; not ideal with no context just sounds vague.
• A page of it reads as coy. The register works only when most sentences around it are direct. One per scene, and let the plain sentences carry the rest.

Frequently asked questions

What is litotes?

Litotes is a form of understatement that says something by denying its opposite, such as 'not bad' for good or 'he was no fool' for clever. It is pronounced LIE-tuh-teez.

What is the difference between litotes and understatement?

Understatement is the broad family: saying less than the situation deserves. Litotes is one particular shape of it, built from a negative ('not unkind', 'no small feat').

Is a double negative the same as litotes?

Not always. 'I don't know nothing' is a double negative that means a single negative. Litotes deliberately denies an opposite to suggest a positive, as in 'not unkind'.