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| Leitotes |
Following the death of her parents, young St. Fidgeta was left in the care of this pagan uncle, who sent her to pagan grammar school [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 11].
Litotes is a form of irony, meant to emphasize by understating. It is one of the classical figures of speech, all of which were known in the middle ages (and subsequently taught in some American high schools and colleges) with Greek names. Litotes means "understatement," such as "you were not kind to your mother when you boiled her in oil."
"The Greek names are all pronounced as if they were English, so litotes is 'lie - TOE - tease'," further explains Bowen. "I think John probably put the anomalous 'German' ei in the first syllable through inadvertence. There's no historical justification for spelling it that way. I used to know several of these figures but the only other one I can remember today is synecdoche (pronunciation perilously similar to Schenectady), which means 'substituting the part for the whole,' as in 'the 200 sabres of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry led the charge,' or 'I don't have wheels tonight.'" |
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes |
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