It is an odd thing to admit, but I have only just realised that one of my favourite and most used forms of expression has a particular name: litotes.

I have E. C. R Lorac’s fictional detective Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald to thank for my education.  In Crook O’Lune, and confronted by the opinion “I’ve an idea that the reverend isn’t entirely unconnected with what’s being going on”, Macdonald replies:

“That’s very moderately put, Hoggett: ‘not entirely unconnected with’ – a form of speech known as ‘Litotes’ if my memory of Matriculation English is not at fault.”

Litotes.  I am ashamed to say that I had never encountered the word before.  Essentially, it is a rhetorical device, which the Oxford English Dictionary describes as “an ironical understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary.”  A double negative, to maybe put it simpler.

For myself, I frequently adopt litotes to avoid hyperbole or committing myself too enthusiastically to a particular opinion.

So, I will be more often heard saying that something is “not bad” rather than going out on a limb and saying that something is “great”.

In Crook O’Lune, Giles Hoggett is consciously toning down his opinions regarding the reverend by saying he is “not entirely unconnected”, when everyone really knows what he means is “he is in it up to his armpits”.

The purpose of litotes is legion.  Modesty; politeness; restraint.  They all seem like good reasons for using them to me.

While the origin of the word ‘litotes’ is Greek, we receive it into the English Language from Old Norse, where it was widely employed.

I recognise that while litotes may add unnecessary complexity to language, it also adds a high degree of nuance.

So, having learned a valuable lesson from E. C. R. Lorac’s detective novel Crook O’Lune, what did I think of the book?

I am tempted to say: “Not bad”.  But, actually, it was “great”.

© Fergus Longfellow

Sometimes, Fergus Longfellow is not a bad blogger.