understatement|understatement

In Rhetoric, the understatement is a Stylistic device which consists in saying less to make some hear more, with a form of negation of the opposite.

Examples

• - Goes, I do not hate itself! Pierre Corneille, Cid (thus, Chimène makes understand in Rodrigue that she likes it.)

• not to confuse Euphemism and understatement:

When it was recognized that this child that one likes
Makes the day in our heart and our house,
That it is the only joy ici-bas which persists
Of all that one dreamed,
Considérez that it is a quite sad thing
to see it which from goes away

Victor Hugo, has Villequier, in conclusion of a poem on the death of his/her daughter

Here, to use the understatement would have given " consider that it is not a thing very heureuse"

• It is really not badly!

• a man enters a bar, it takes a chair, crashes to pieces it on a table, launches the remains towards the bottles arranged behind the counter. There, a customer exclaims: “ it is really not a gentleman.”

• In the Business Thomas Crown , Vicki Anderson is found in the house of the richissime Thomas Crown, where all is only luxury and says to him: “ you are not in the need.”

See too

• Adynaton
• Ambiguity
• Anacoluthon
• Antanaclase
• Antiphrasis
• Aphorism
• Chleuasme
• Metaphor
• Oxymore
• Preterition

External bonds

• Québécois Office of the French language

Random links:

Cranves-dirty | Canton of Maizières-the-Metz | Eugene Guibaud | Joseph d' Arbaud | Municipal stage of Bonoua