Word for the Day: Litotes

Litotes

In rhetoric, litotes (pron.: \ˈlī-tə-ˌtēz, ˈli-, lī-ˈtō-ˌtēz\) is a figure of speech in which understatement is employed for rhetorical effect, principally via double negatives. For example, rather than saying that something is attractive (or even very attractive), one might merely say it is "not unattractive".

Litotes is a form of understatement, always deliberate and with the intention of emphasis. However, the interpretation of negation may depend on context, including cultural context. In speech, it may also depend on intonation and emphasis; for example, the phrase "not bad" can be said in such a way as to mean anything from "mediocre" to "excellent".

The use of litotes is common in English, Russian, German and French. They are features of Old English poetry and of the Icelandic sagas and are a means of much stoical restraint.

George Orwell complained about overuse of the 'not un...' construction in his essay "Politics and the English Language".

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The vast potentiality for happiness

From “PostCaptain” by Patrick O’Brian.

“When I let my mind dwell on the vast potentiality for happiness, and our present state? Such potentiality, and so much misery? Hatred the only moving force, a petulant unhappy striving – childhood the only happiness, and that unknowing; then the continual battle that cannot ever possibly be won; a losing fight against ill health – poverty for nearly all.  Life is a long disease with only one termination and its last years are appalling: weak, racked by the stone, rheumatismal pains, senses going, friends, family, occupation gone, a man must pray for imbecility or a heart of stone.  All under sentence of death, often ignominious frequently agonizing: and then the unspeakable levity with which the faint chance of happiness is thrown away for some jealousy, tiff, sullenness, private vanity, mistaken sense of honor, that deadly, weak and silly notion.”

Guatemala

Guatemala

Ruth Yarrow, Seattle, Washington

waking to soft light
on our interior wall—
sun gilds the courtyard

motorbike
over sun-warmed cobblestones 
her bosoms jiggle

she slaps rhythm
into her tortillas— 
hoofs on cobblestones

monastery:
cascading toward the fountain bouganvillea

poor end of town—
between rusted roof ridges 
streams of silver rain

tour guide’s violent tale—
through the shutters, faintly marimbas

Antigua at dusk—
among the cobblestones 
glass shards glitter

barefoot in velvet dark
only a whiff of woodsmoke . . . 
and smooth cool tiles

Spring

Spring
by Jim Harrison

Something new in the air today, perhaps the struggle of the bud
to become a leaf. Nearly two weeks late it invaded the air but
then what is two weeks to life herself? On a cool night there is
a break from the struggle of becoming. I suppose that's why we
sleep. In a childhood story they spoke of the land of enchant-
ment." We crawl to it, we short-lived mammals, not realizing that
we are already there. To the gods the moon is the entire moon
but to us it changes second by second because we are always fish
in the belly of the whale of earth. We are encased and can't stray
from the house of our bodies. I could say that we are released,
but I don't know, in our private night when our souls explode
into a billion fragments then calmly regather in a black pool in
the forest, far from the cage of flesh, the unremitting "I." This was
a dream and in dreams we are forever alone walking the ghost
road beyond our lives. Of late I see waking as another chance at
spring. 

"Spring" by Jim Harrison, from Songs of Unreason. © Copper Canyon Press, 2011.

SAP'S RUNNING

SAP'S RUNNING
by Laura Rodley

The hearts of trees are sleeping,
But the sun’s warmth wakes them up
A fever from root to bud
A raging that froths the ground
Boiling bubbles, time to start
Tapping, collect their tears
Drink them as boiled sugar
Syrup for hot pancakes, sausage links. 

Mouse Dreams

The Country
by Billy Collins

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country? 

"The Country" by Billy Collins, from Nine Horses: Poems. © Random House, 2003

Word for Today: obnubilate

obnubilate \ob-NOO-buh-leyt\, verb:

to cloud over; becloud; obscure.

...their trunks were black and knobbly, whilst their branches buckled over as a roof to meet a brick plane and obnubilate a view of the stars.
-- Colin Cornelius, Monkeys Can't Swim

It is the pity of the world, Dr Maturin, to see a man of your parts obnubilate his mind with the juice of the poppy.
-- Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command

Obnubilate, a late 16th century word, is a verbal derivative of the Latin nūbilus meaning "cloudy," though its closer ancestor, obnūbilāre means "to darken."