{"id":12074,"date":"2016-02-10T16:52:09","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T16:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=12074"},"modified":"2016-02-10T16:52:09","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T16:52:09","slug":"a-not-entirely-uninteresting-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=12074","title":{"rendered":"A not entirely uninteresting post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The title of this post is perhaps an example of <strong>litotes<\/strong> [la\u026a\u02c8t\u0259\u028a.ti\u02d0z], a figure of speech that uses understatement, particularly double negatives, to make a positive statement [<a href=\"http:\/\/literarydevices.net\/litotes\/\">source<\/a>]. Other examples include:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; I didn&#8217;t do too badly in the test<br \/>\n&#8211; It&#8217;s a bit chilly<br \/>\n&#8211; He&#8217;s not a bad guitarist<\/p>\n<p>Litotes comes from the Ancient Greek <em>\u03bb\u03b9\u03c4\u03cc\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2<\/em> \u200e(lit\u00f3t\u0113s), from <em>\u03bb\u03b9\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2<\/em> \u200e(lit\u00f3s &#8211; simple) via the French <em>litote<\/em> (litotes, understatement) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/litotes\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The antonym of litotes is <strong>hyperbole<\/strong> (overstatement), which comes, via Latin, from the Ancient Greek <em>\u1f51\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u03ae<\/em> \u200e(huperbol\u1e17 &#8211; excess, exaggeration), from <em>\u1f51\u03c0\u03ad\u03c1<\/em> \u200e(hup\u00e9r, -above) and <em>\u03b2\u03ac\u03bb\u03bb\u03c9<\/em> \u200e(b\u00e1ll\u014d &#8211; I throw) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/hyperbole\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>I make some use litotes (that&#8217;s an example), as do many British people. Is this common in other countries?<\/p>\n<p><em>This post was inspired by an episode of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.podcastchart.com\/podcasts\/the-allusionist\/episodes\/3-going-viral\">The Allusionist<\/a>, a podcast in which Helen Zaltzman discusses language, words and related topics.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The title of this post is perhaps an example of litotes [la\u026a\u02c8t\u0259\u028a.ti\u02d0z], a figure of speech that uses understatement, particularly double negatives, to make a positive statement [source]. Other examples include: &#8211; I didn&#8217;t do too badly in the test &#8211; It&#8217;s a bit chilly &#8211; He&#8217;s not a bad guitarist Litotes comes from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}