Noun

(-)

(rhetoric) A figure of speech in which the speaker emphasizes the magnitude of a statement by denying its opposite; a figure of speech in which understatement is used with negation to express a positive attribute; a form of irony

{{examples-right, sense=figure of speech, width=60%, examples=* She's not the nicest person I know (to indicate meanness)
* He's not exactly a rocket scientist (to indicate lack of intelligence)
* Organizing these records is no small task (to indicate difficulty)
* Not bad (that is to say, good)}} (-)

Noun

(chiasmi)

(rhetoric) An inversion of the relationship between the elements of phrases.

* 1934', H. H. Walker & N. W. Lund "The Literary Sturcture of the Book of Habakkuk", ''Journal of Biblical Literature'' ' 53 (4): 355.

The book of Habakkuk has been discovered to consist of a closely knit chiastic structure throughout. This is the first poem of such length to stand revealed as a literary unit of this kind, though chiasmus has already been discovered throughout many psalms

* 1984', Ethel Grodzins Romm, "Persuasive Writing", ''American Bar Association Journal'' ' 70 : 158.

John F. Kennedy is more famous for his chiasmus than for many of his policies:
"Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."

* 2002 , Simon R. Slings, "Figures of Speech in Aristophanes", in'' Andreas Willi (editor), ''The Language of Greek Comedy , pages 103-104

Leeman therefore holds that chiasmus' is the basic order in Greek and Latin: antithesis is, he claims, normal for the modern, rational mind, but for the Greeks and Romans ' chiasmus was more natural.

* 2009 , Seyed Ghahreman Safavi & Simon Weightman, R?m?'s Mystical Design: Reading the Mathnaw?, Book One , page 46

The realization that Mawl?n? was using parallelism and chiasmus to organize the higher levels of his work has been a major surprise.