| News |
| Word of the Day |
Need a word of the day?
Click here
|
| Toastmaster Automation |
Do you currently have instant visibilty of every member's progress for speeches and CL?
Can you plan a meeting and produce the agenda in just a minute?
easy-Speak gives you this - and more.
Look at an overview of features
|
| Start your Club on easy-Speak |
It's really easy to let easy-Speak provide the data management for your club.
Find out how
|
|
 Click here for web-video clips showing how to use easy-Speak |
|
 |
|
| Word of the Day - for Toastmasters everywhere
Wednesday 10th March 2010
|
Archive | Previous word | Today's word |
|
|
|
Understatement for effect, meiosis; more strictly a figure of speech, in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary.
|
All the ingredients for life are present in a dying star. "It just takes a little time" said Neill, as neat a litotes as I have heard, as the universe's theme tune, The Blue Danube, struck up.
Nancy Banks- Smith, The Guardian, 23 July 2001. Guardian |
|
The British Medical Association, killjoy that it is, counters that "funding should be directed to activities that do not present the risk of deliberate brain injury to young people". I detect a bit of litotes, there - I bet when they had their meeting about what kind of press release to send out, the majority were in favour of a statement like "You absolute lunatics! What on earth are you playing at, teaching youngsters to brain each other?", until a bright spark suggested understatement, for comic effect.
Zoe Williams, The Guardian, 28 September 2004. Guardian |
|
Peter Reid, the Sunderland manager, a man adept in the use of litotes, said: "It wasn’t the best game of pure football in the world."
Simon Barnes, The Times, 15 January 2001.
The Times |
|
Join the Contributors | Suggestions & Comment | Link to us | Grammarian's Print |
|
|
|
Search online dictionaries
Powered by OneLook®
|
| "Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them" - Charles Simic
|
|
|
|
