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In speech, litotes may also depend on intonation and emphasis; for example, the phrase "not bad" can be intonated differently so as to mean either "mediocre" or "excellent". [6] Along the same lines, litotes can be used (as a form of auxesis [7]), to euphemistically provide emphasis by diminishing the harshness of an observation; "He isn't the ...
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!"
Irony – Creating a trope through implying the opposite of the standard meaning, such as describing a bad situation as "good times". Litotes – A figure of speech and form of verbal 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.
Understatement often leads to litotes, rhetorical constructs in which understatement is used to emphasize a point. It is a staple of humour in English-speaking cultures. For example, in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, an Army officer has just lost his leg. When asked how he feels, he looks down at his bloody stump and responds, "Stings a bit."
The new king of Denmark has changed the country’s royal coat of arms to more prominently feature Greenland in an apparent rebuke of President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to take over the ...
A Brooklyn homeless shelter employee was brutally stabbed to death on the premises of a hotel converted to house the homeless, in the Brownsville neighborhood.
For example, the phrase, "John, my best friend" uses the scheme known as apposition. Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men").
(The Center Square) – A new report from California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office shows that the young adult mortality rate has remained much higher than pre-pandemic levels. “Overall ...