What's a good word for the "understatement of the year"?

[Roy Tremblay]

It's only mid year, so maybe this isn't going to be the understatement of
the year, but what's a good single word for this?

"It's a tragedy," a stunned colleague [said]... "We just do not know how
it could have happened."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/06/18/spanish-matador-gored-to-death-when-his-feet-become-tangled-in-his-cloak/

BTW, the understatement of the last century had to be Hirohito's recorded
comments to the Japanese people about how well the war had been going for
them.

What's one word for understatement that sums up the fact that these are
tremendously iconic standout understatements?

[Horace LaBadie]

In article <olivnn$ag7$1...@gioia.aioe.org>,

Neither of those are understatements.

When the space shuttle Challenger exploded, "Obviously a major
malfunction," was an understatement.

[Roy Tremblay]

Horace LaBadie <hlab...@nospam.com> actually wrote:

> Neither of those are understatements.
>
> When the space shuttle Challenger exploded, "Obviously a major
> malfunction," was an understatement.

I disagree but of course, everything depends on the degree of satirical
irony involved.

In the case you just listed, saying "obviously" along with "malfunction"
makes complete sense as does the word "major" to qualify it accurately as
an obvious and major malfunction.

So I see almost zero understatement there.

Had they said that perhaps something extremely minor had occurred, *that*
would be an understatement, but once they used the word "major", there's no
understatement to be divined (IMHO).

However, I see your very assesrtion listed in the examples here:
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Understatement

So, I may be alone in feeling that the was indeed exactly the situation of
an obvious and major malfunction.

However, I too find Hirohito's appraisal of the war situation often listed
as one of the most ironic understatements in all of recorded human history:
"the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan┬ advantage"
https://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2014/12/the-10-greatest-understatements-in-history.html

As to your point that expressing surprise that a matador could be gored by
a bull during a staged bullfight isn't an understatement, I could more
easily acquiesce to your view.

But for you to intimate that Hirohito's diminution wasn't one of the most
poignant understatements of human history, boggles the mind.

Nonetheless, the question remains as to how we could better describe, in a
word, any understatement that is shockingly ironic.

[RH Draney]

On 7/29/2017 5:11 PM, Roy Tremblay wrote:
>
> However, I too find Hirohito's appraisal of the war situation often listed
> as one of the most ironic understatements in all of recorded human history:

> "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan¢s advantage"

This reminds me of the time Romy Schneider appeared on "Rowan & Martin's
Laugh-In", and someone decided to have her in one scene talking to
Wolfgang, the little Nazi soldier played by Arte Johnson (who closed
each show by intoning "ve-e-ery interesting!"):

Schneider: "Come home, Wolfgang. The war is over."
Wolfgang: "It's over? How did we do?"
Schneider: "Not too bad. We came in second."

....r

[occam]

"Britishism"

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

When the space shuttle Challenger exploded, "There's been a bit of a
problem".

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Roy Tremblay]

Stefan Ram <r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de> actually wrote:

>>https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/06/18/spanish-matador-gored-to-death-when-his-feet-become-tangled-in-his-cloak/
>
> It must have felt unpleasant to that matador - not
> an event his friends and relatives shall look back
> on with undiluted pleasure.

My point on the understatement is that it's a sport which is conspicuously
dangerous where the ever present danger is that the bull will gore the
matador.

From that perspective, the question of "how could this have happened?" is,
to me, an elevated ironic statement.

Thinking further though, it's not necessarily an understatement so much as
simply a misunderstanding on my part.

Almost certainly, the stunned colleague was musing why a professional, who
knew how NOT to get gored by a bull, slipped up (literally, on his cape).

Basically, the matador turned away from the bull with a flourish of his
cape, and somehow, against established protocol, allowed his feet to be
entangled in the cape, the rest of the story being easy to reconstruct
after that momentous event.

So what the stunned colleague was likely wondering is how the matador could
have allowed himself to be tripped by his own cape where petard hoisting
comes to mind had hubris been involved.

Nonetheless, the question remains unanswered as to what we might use to
qualify the most glaringly poignant understatements in history akin to "we
came in second place" in the prior humorous example of Hirohito's hugely
ironic understatement of the war not necessarily going as well as they had
planned just after the Russians attacked them on land when their entire
strategy (and their ONLY option) from the very start of the Pacific War was
to both keep the Russians out and to negotiate a peace with the US on
favorable terms for Japan.

[Roy Tremblay]

"Peter Duncanson [BrE]" <ma...@peterduncanson.net> actually wrote:

> When the space shuttle Challenger exploded, "There's been a bit of a
> problem".

I have to say I was shocked that anyone would consider the words that there
was a "major" "malfunction" an understatement, so people must be keying in
on the word "obviously" when they claim that it's an understatement worthy
of note.

Normally I'd completly dismiss that "obviously a major malfunction" as an
understatement since it says exactly what happened, but, there it was in a
list on the Internet as an understatement.

My argument is that it's not even close to what I'm talking about, whereas
your suggestion of "Houston, we have a problem" is a classic understatement
which I would put on the list of understatements which deserve a descriptor
of "classic" or "momentous" or some other designation of canonical import.

But what's the word I seek that elevates the understatement to historic
proportions befitting of "the war situation has developed not necessarily
to Japan's advantage" after two atomic bombs, a Russian invasion,
destruction of the air and naval arms, and loss of all the barrier islands
for an island empire.

If people really think that "obviously major malfunction" is a classic
understatement, then they don't understand what I'm asking.

I'm asking about the "real" and "big" understatements, not something that
simply has obvious implications but tells the truth nonetheless.

[Roy Tremblay]

occam <oc...@127.0.0.1> actually wrote:

>> What's one word for understatement that sums up the fact that these are
>> tremendously iconic standout understatements?
>>
>
> "Britishism"

Interestingly apropos, as I was thinking of another far-too-understated
assessment by a British commander in the Korean war that cost the lives of
many men... offhand, I think it was the defense of "grenidaires hill"
(sp?).

I remember it as I read about it in one of the canonical tomes on the
Korean War where the author basically said, in effect, that the "classic
British habit of sardonic understatement" cost their men their very lives.

I'm trying to remember the exact situation where, as I recall, it was a
British commander on a hill near the Chosin Reservoir who was surrounded by
the Chinese and killing them like flies in a terrible attritional defense
when his American superior radioed to ask how he was doing.

Despite the fact that the British were about to be overrun, his reply was
far too sardonically understated, such that the American general got a far
lesser impression of their dire need than was in fact the case, with the
end result being most (or many of) the British soldiers died on that ironic
statement.

The implication in the book was that this is one classic British
understatement that was costly in terms of British lives.

[CDB]

On 7/30/2017 3:37 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Roy Tremblay <rmbla...@nlnet.nl> writes:

>> "It's a tragedy," a stunned colleague [said]... "We just do not
>> know how it could have happened."
>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/06/18/spanish-matador-gored-to-death-when-his-feet-become-tangled-in-his-cloak/

> It must have felt unpleasant to that matador - not
> an event his friends and relatives shall look back on with undiluted
> pleasure.

It's a necessary risk. Sometimes the god wants a different sacrifice.

[Roy Tremblay]

Stefan Ram <r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de> actually wrote:

> Astronauts often were former test pilots. And one of the
> major traits of test pilots is to stay calm. When a major
> disaster is about to happen, mere mortals would shout into
> their mike, "Sh**, I'm goin' to die.". A test pilot would
> merely report relevant technical data, like altitude or
> velocity as long as possible. Sometimes, this trait might
> even help to save his life or otherwise it might at least
> help to save the life of his successors.

I think of three canonically classic understatements which fit that
description.

1. "We have a problem", uttered by three ex pilots utterly alone who are
used to being alone in a vehicle in unfriendly space.

2. "Maybe, just maybe, the war isn't going as well as we had planned"
uttered by a seasoned politician who is used to underplaying political
realities.

3. "Things are a bit sticky".

I looked up that "canonically sardonic" statement and found a reference
here which explains that "classic" understatement which can be considered
to be a defining example of British understatement.

[quote]
"Things are a bit sticky, sir," Brig Tom Brodie of the Gloucestershire
Regiment told General Robert H Soule, intending to convey that they were in
extreme difficulty.

But Gen Soule understood this to mean "We're having a bit of rough and
tumble but we're holding the line". Oh good, the general decided, no need
to reinforce or withdraw them, not yet anyway.

The upshot was one of the most famous, heroic and - according to a BBC2
documentary on April 20 - unnecessary last stands in military history
[/quote]
Needless battle caused by uncommon language
How a misunderstanding between a British brigadier and US general led to
disaster on a Korean battlefield
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/14/johnezard

[Roy Tremblay]

Roy Tremblay <rmbla...@nlnet.nl> actually wrote:

> I'm trying to remember the exact situation where, as I recall, it was a
> British commander on a hill near the Chosin Reservoir who was surrounded by
> the Chinese and killing them like flies in a terrible attritional defense
> when his American superior radioed to ask how he was doing.

I found a reference to this, which is of the type considered to be classic
of British understatements where this particular canonical understatement
was misunderstood by the Americans to the point that it cost many British
lives.

[quote]
An American, Maj-Gen Robert H Soule, asked the British brigadier, Thomas
Brodie: "How are the Glosters doing?" The brigadier, schooled in British
understatement, replied: "A bit sticky, things are pretty sticky down
there." To American ears, this did not sound too desperate. [Hence] Gen
Soule ordered the Glosters to hold fast and await relief the following
morning. With that their fate was sealed.
[/quote]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1316777/The-day-650-Glosters-faced-10000-Chinese.html

What's the word that appropriately elevates such understatement to
canonical proportions?

[Whiskers]

On 2017-07-29, Roy Tremblay <rmbla...@nlnet.nl> wrote:
> It's only mid year, so maybe this isn't going to be the understatement
> of the year, but what's a good single word for this?
>
> "It's a tragedy," a stunned colleague [said]... "We just do not know
> how it could have happened."
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/06/18/spanish-matador-gored-to-death-when-his-feet-become-tangled-in-his-cloak/

I see no understatement at all there. Man risks life, gets killed.
Just a straight-forward predictable sequence of events; possibly not
even an undesired outcome for all the spectators. 'Tragedy' is exactly
the right word. 'We just do not know how it could have happened' is
clearly nonsense but can be attributed to shock and grief overwhelming
logical thought.

> BTW, the understatement of the last century had to be Hirohito's
> recorded comments to the Japanese people about how well the war had
> been going for them.
>
> What's one word for understatement that sums up the fact that these
> are tremendously iconic standout understatements?

Are you thinking of 'hyperbole' or 'litotes'?

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[Peter T. Daniels]

You may be recalling the line from *Apollo 13*, which may or may not have been
actually said by the actual crewmen, "Houston, we have a problem."

Spoiler: They got back to Earth ok.

[Roy Tremblay]

Whiskers <catwh...@operamail.com> actually wrote:

> "We just do not know how it could have happened."

> I see no understatement at all there.

In thinking further (farther?) about this situation, I belatedly agree with
you where, as with the "obvious major malfunction" statement, it is only an
ironic understatement to those who misinterpret the context.

So, as in the case of those who propose "obvious major malfunction" as an
"understatement", I had made the same mistake and hence I had
misinterpreted the intent.

The intent of "how could this have happened?" was almost certainly that the
stunned colleague couldn't understand how the matador got tripped up in his
own cape, and not so much what I had originally interpreted as "how could a
matador possibly have been gored by a bull, of all things to be gored by?".

> Man risks life, gets killed.
> Just a straight-forward predictable sequence of events; possibly not
> even an undesired outcome for all the spectators. 'Tragedy' is exactly
> the right word. 'We just do not know how it could have happened' is
> clearly nonsense but can be attributed to shock and grief overwhelming
> logical thought.

I think I took it out of context. It's more likely that the colleague was
aware, as all professionals are aware, that the bull has a penchant for
goring matadors who lie down on the job - hence - one would think a
professional matador would strive to stay on his feet.

More appropriately, the stunned colleague was probably wondering how the
matador could have allowed himself to get tripped up by his own equipment
(which he had full control of one would presume).

So the "mistake" is not in being gored by the bull but in being tripped up
by his own cape (what do they call a matador's cape anyway?).

>> What's one word for understatement that sums up the fact that these
>> are tremendously iconic standout understatements?
>
> Are you thinking of 'hyperbole' or 'litotes'?

Looking up each of those two for a more refined definition than I have in
my head, I find...

hyperbole: extravagant exaggeration
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hyperbole

litotes: understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the
negative of the contrary (as in ´not a bad singerĄ or ´not unhappyĄ)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/litotes

It's clearly not hyperbole because it's an "under exaggeration, but it
might be a litotes. However, the accumulation of negatives in series in
litotes' definition is a bit unsettling to my mind.

Looking for a "more better" definition of litotes, I find a far more clear
definition in Oxford of...
litotes: the use of a negative or weak statement to emphasize a positive meaning
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/litotes

Notice that most of the classic understatements are attempts to undermine
the severity of a highly negative outcome, whereas all the examples above
are the opposite.

Looking up the origin of litotes, we find it's apparently a Greek noun with
the general meaning of "plainness" or "simplicity" or "assertion by
negation" (as in "not bad" means "good").
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2017/07/25/litotes

The word I seek seems to be the direct antonym of "litotes", as in "not
good" means "really bad").

[Roy Tremblay]

Roy Tremblay <rmbla...@nlnet.nl> actually wrote:

> Notice that most of the classic understatements are attempts to undermine
> the severity of a highly negative outcome, whereas all the examples above
> are the opposite.

The word "litotes" is a great suggestion, where the word I seek is the
exact antonym of the word "litotes".

Litotes, apparently, mean a positive statement said in a seemingly negative
way.

The word I see is the opposite, which is a negative statement said in a
seemingly positive way.

For example, take a glimpse at these supposedly classic historically
poignant negative statements set in a seemingly positive manner:
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Understatement/Quotes
http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Understatement/Quotes

Looking up antonyms for "litotes", I find hyperbole as the only antonym:
https://www.powerthesaurus.org/litotes/antonyms

But synonyms abound:
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/litotes

Since "hyperbole" is an exageration of a positive outcome, it can't be the
antonym of "litotes" that I seek.

Litotes are a way of saying positive things in a negative way (as in "not
bad" means "good"); but what I seek is a word for describing negative
things said in a positive way (as in "a bit sticky" meaning "we're all
gonna die!").

It may very well be that the word I seek doesn't exist in the English
language - hence why I asked here, just in case it does.

[Roy Tremblay]

Stefan Ram <r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de> actually wrote:

>>Brodie: "How are the Glosters doing?" The brigadier, schooled in British
>>understatement, replied: "A bit sticky, things are pretty sticky down
>>there." To American ears, this did not sound too desperate. [Hence] Gen
>

> Similar misunderstandings were reported more recently when
> passenger airplanes were in dire need of fuel but their
> pilots came from a culture where it was considered impolite
> to express directly (or even with some emphasis) the need to
> land on a nearby airport, and so those planes just fall from
> the sky.

I remember that situation where, as I recall, the cultural divide wasn't
that pilots underestimate their fuel, but that pilots in that area of the
world habitually overestimate their dire needs.

Hence, as I recall understanding the situation at the time (a few months
ago, as I recall), the South American airport controllers considered the
pilots plea yet another inconsequential example of the "boy who cried
wolf".

Notice that the intent of the understatement is what matters greatly.

Situation 1:
- Controller-to-pilot: "How are you doing on fuel?"
- Pilot-to-controller: "Not as good as we had hoped. We might actually
already be out of fuel in fact."

Situation 2:
- Controller-to-pilot: "How are you doing on fuel?"
- Pilot-to-controller: "We want priority landing. Why? Just because. So
we'll declare a fuel emergency as a trick to obtain priority landing"

It's situation 1 that I'm trying to find a word for.
If I understood litotes, this would be a litotes:
Situation 3:
- Controller-to-pilot: "How are you doing on fuel?"
- Pilot-to-controller: "not bad" (meaning "we're fine on fuel")

I'm basically trying to describe the classic British and Japanese penchant
for understating a really bad situation, where litotes is for understating
a good situation.

So whatever is truly the opposite of litotes is what I seek.

It's not hyperbole though, because hyperbole is exaggerating a good
situation. What I see is a word for understating a really bad situation.

[Roy Tremblay]

Stefan Ram <r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de> actually wrote:

> This must sound trivial, since you already used the verb
> "to understate", and "understatement" already appears in
> the subject header of this thread, but isn't this an
> "understatement"?
>
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understatement
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_understatement
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis_(figure_of_speech)
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

Yeah. I guess that's the closest we'll get to a word that describes the
response to "how are you doing on fuel?" of "we landed already - in the
trees".

But the problem with mere "understatement" is that I'm trying to find a
word for "gross understatement".

I guess you just answered the question, which is that these are
"particularly eggregious understatements" of fact:

World to Hirohito: "How is the war going for you?"
Hirohito to World: "Not as good as we would have liked."

[bebe...@aol.com]

There are apparently no such words, and only a phrase can render the complete
idea, but may I suggest "perunderstatement" (where per has the meaning of
"thoroughly", "utterly", "very")?

[charles]

In article <olkms3$mph$1...@gioia.aioe.org>, Roy Tremblay

Gloucesters, please.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England

[GordonD]

That was indeed the line as said in the film. The actual words spoken by
Jim Lovell were, "Houston, we've had a problem." Apparently the
scriptwriters changed it in case the audience interpreted his use of the
past tense as indicating that they'd had a problem but everything was
fine now.

> Spoiler: They got back to Earth ok.
>

--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

[Whiskers]

That isn't 'understatement', it's a misunderstanding. The two officers
thought they were using the same language; but they weren't.

[Whiskers]

On 2017-07-30, Roy Tremblay <rmbla...@nlnet.nl> wrote:

The Greeks have a word for it.

Does 'meiosis' meet your requirements?

(Rhet.) Diminution; a species of hyperbole, representing a thing as
being less than it really is; understatement; see also litotes. [1913
Webster +PJC]

I've always seen 'hyperbole' as being a description of any exaggeration,
whether of a negative or positive attribute.

[Peter Moylan]

"What's wrong with these cojones? They were a lot bigger when I had them
the other day."
"Sometimes, señor, the bull he does not lose."

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia