Home › Glossary › Letter L

Litotes

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A rhetorical understatement achieved by negating the opposite (e.g., “not unkind”), often used for irony, modesty, or subtle emphasis.

Detailed Definition
Litotes is a rhetorical understatement using double negatives for ironic or emphatic effect (e.g., “not unkind” meaning “kind”); in poetry, it conveys modesty, irony, or restrained emotion, as in Anglo-Saxon verse (“That was no common gift”) or modernist restraint to imply more than stated.
Example
Example in poetry:
Litotes: “She’s not unkind” implies kindness through understatement; Auden: “He was not unfamiliar with grief”; A poem describing war as “not peaceful”; Contemporary verse: “This isn’t the worst day” to convey despair; Litotes creates irony, modesty, or emotional restraint.
Additional Notes
Litotes: A form of understatement using double negatives for ironic emphasis (e.g., “not bad” meaning “excellent”); common in Old English poetry and modern irony; related to meiosis.
Other Meanings of “Litotes”
Also Known As
Deliberate understatement Negative affirmation Double negative Ironic minimization Meiosis Understatement
Skip to main content