Another Rhetoric Term for You: Litotes

A rhetorical figure in which a statement is made by denying it’s opposite, e.g.:

From Beowulf:

“The hall he scanned.
By the wall then went he; his weapon raised
high by its hilts the Hygelac-thane,
angry and eager. That edge was not useless
to the warrior now.”

Acts 21:39

Paul answered, "I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people."

Everyday phrases:

“not bad”
“no big deal”

Typically (and this is particularly example in the everyday phrases listed above), litotes is used as a form of understatement. However, poets often use this figure in more sophisticated ways. Often, it is used to preserve a sense of ambiguity; when something is described with litotes, you don’t actually know what it is, but merely what it is not.

Litotes can also bring to mind a richer mental image that describing something directly, since the structure often brings to mind both the thing being described and its opposite. For instance, when Wordsworth begins the first sonnet of The River Duddon sequence by saying he is “not envying” cool, shady Bandusia, he forces you to consider two things, both what it would mean to envy Bandusia and what it would mean to not envy Bandusia. As you can see, this construction lends itself well to Wordsworth’s interest in oppositional forces that we talked about in “Scorn Not the Sonnet,” and indeed Wordsworth uses this construction quite often in his sonnets.