Litotes vs Hyperbole - What's the difference?
litotes | hyperbole |
(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)}} (-) (uncountable) Extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device.
(uncountable) Deliberate exaggeration.
(countable) An instance or example of this technique.
(countable, obsolete) A hyperbola.
'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar'd,
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd,
Would seem hyperboles . * 1837 — *: The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole , a feature of grandeur and magnificence. * 1841 — , ch. 28 *: "Nay - nay - good Sumach," interrupted Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole with patience. * 1843 — *: The honourable gentleman forces us to hear a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and hyperboles , Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort of eloquence? * c.1910 — *: Of course the hymn has come to us from somewhere else, but I do not know from where; and the average native of our village firmly believes that it is indigenous to our own soil—which it can not be, unless it deals in hyperbole , for the nearest approach to a river in our neighborhood is the village pond. * 2001 - Tom Bentley, Daniel Stedman Jones, The Moral Universe *: The perennial problem, especially for the BBC, has been to reconcile the hyperbole -driven agenda of newspapers with the requirement of balance, which is crucial to the public service remit.
Hyperbole is a antonym of litotes.
As nouns the difference between litotes and hyperbole
is that litotes is 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 while hyperbole is extreme exaggeration or overstatement; especially as a literary or rhetorical device.litotes
English
(wikipedia litotes)Noun
(-)* 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)}} (-)
See also
* auxesis * meiosis * paradiastole * double negativeAnagrams
* ----hyperbole
English
(wikipedia hyperbole)Noun
(en noun)Quotations
{{timeline, 1600s=1602, 1800s=1837 1841 1843, 1900s=1910, 2000s=2001}} * 1602 — i 3 *: ...and when he speaks'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar'd,
Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp'd,
Would seem hyperboles . * 1837 — *: The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole , a feature of grandeur and magnificence. * 1841 — , ch. 28 *: "Nay - nay - good Sumach," interrupted Deerslayer, whose love of truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole with patience. * 1843 — *: The honourable gentleman forces us to hear a good deal of this detestable rhetoric; and then he asks why, if the secretaries of the Nizam and the King of Oude use all these tropes and hyperboles , Lord Ellenborough should not indulge in the same sort of eloquence? * c.1910 — *: Of course the hymn has come to us from somewhere else, but I do not know from where; and the average native of our village firmly believes that it is indigenous to our own soil—which it can not be, unless it deals in hyperbole , for the nearest approach to a river in our neighborhood is the village pond. * 2001 - Tom Bentley, Daniel Stedman Jones, The Moral Universe *: The perennial problem, especially for the BBC, has been to reconcile the hyperbole -driven agenda of newspapers with the requirement of balance, which is crucial to the public service remit.