Figure of Speech
Understatement
A cornerstone of British irony and Old English heroic poetry ('That was not a good day'). The rhetorical figure meiosis (making smaller) is its classical form; litotes is its most common species.
Definition
Deliberate representation of something as less significant, powerful, or extreme than it actually is.
Example
'It's just a scratch' when grievously wounded; Hemingway's prose style is defined by systematic understatement.