Litotes
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In rhetoric, litotes is a figure of speech in which the speaker either strengthens or weakens the emphasis of a claim by denying its opposite. The literal meaning of a litotes is "not X (but not necessarily Y)", and a litotes can be used as an understatement, actually meaning "very much Y," or to express ambivalence. Like many figures of speech, litotes is better understood in some cultural and linguistic contexts than in others.
[edit] Examples
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Litotes:
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As a means of saying:
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[edit] Related phenomena
In English, such expressions as "not not good" are commonly used colloquially to express ambivalence. This is not necessarily the opposite of a conventional litotes, where the intent would be to emphasize the magnitude of the goodness. In colloquial speech, "It's not good, but it's not not good" likely means something like, "It's not particularly good, but it's not particularly bad, either." Similarly, in colloquial British English, the phrase not half usually means completely, as in the sentence "I don't half fancy a drink", which means, "I fancy a drink."
In the regional dialect of the Upper Midwest United States, particularly in Minnesota, the indirect approach of litotes is very common, and is the preferred method of making strong statements without offending listeners or going out on a limb. For example, a speaker may say, “Jenny’s hot dish wasn’t too good tonight,” which actually means that it was close to inedible. Whereas the phrase, “that sweet corn outside the Metrodome is not too bad,” is a form of the highest praise.
In many languages, including some non-standard dialects of English, double negatives can be used to express a simple negation; for example, in Spanish, "No quiero nada" (literally "I don't want nothing") means "I don't want anything."
In some languages, some litotes are so idiomatic that they are not true figures of speech, but rather fixed expressions. For instance, in French, the sentence "Il faut qu'il aille" means "It's necessary that he go", while its opposite, "Il ne faut pas qu'il aille" means "it is necessary that he not go", which is much stronger than its English counterpart.
