What's the difference between litotes and satire?

Litotes


Definition:

  • (n.) A diminution or softening of statement for the sake of avoiding censure or increasing the effect by contrast with the moderation shown in the form of expression; as, " a citizen of no mean city," that is, of an illustrious city.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Overuse, of course, might be a problem, but if I were an editor I would also write a shouty note if I discovered that my writers were routinely overusing pre-digital-age and perfectly grown-up words such as litotes and plinth.

Satire


Definition:

  • (a.) A composition, generally poetical, holding up vice or folly to reprobation; a keen or severe exposure of what in public or private morals deserves rebuke; an invective poem; as, the Satires of Juvenal.
  • (a.) Keeness and severity of remark; caustic exposure to reprobation; trenchant wit; sarcasm.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) After heading for Rome with his long-term partner, Howard Auster, he returned to fiction with a bestselling novel, Julian, based on the life of a late Roman emperor; a political novel, Washington DC, based on his own family; and Myra Breckinridge, a subversive satire that examined contradictions of gender and sexuality with enough comic brio to become a worldwide bestseller.
  • (2) Comic writing can be a brutal, unforgiving business, yet it can produce great and multi-layered prose, combining comedy, pathos and satire.
  • (3) A Cairo heart surgeon inspired by the US news programme The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has captivated Egyptian viewers with a new style of satirical TV show poking fun at politicians on air for the first time.
  • (4) I'd like to say it's all a biting satire of American military practices (I know Busty Cops Go Hawaiian certainly was) but chances are it's just about a bunch of big meanie spiders.
  • (5) With commendable alacrity, meanwhile, the developers at art-game co-operative KOOPmode have already released a downloadable satire on how Facebook might work in 3D , graced with the irresistible tagline: "Scroll Facebook … with your face".
  • (6) One particular poem attacked by Liao, he said, is not praising a disgraced party official, but is actually satire.
  • (7) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Some recent statements on gay marriage from Ireland: "This is really a kind of a satire on marriage that is being conducted by the gay lobby.
  • (8) Some singers and writers are understood to write “in character” – Elvis Costello, for instance, or Randy Newman – because the characters they create are so obviously not themselves, and are either highly exaggerated or satirical creations or, in the case of Randy Newman, a monstrous opposite.
  • (9) Homegrown talent Facebook Twitter Pinterest There’s not much in the way of English-speaking talent, but Papi Jiang has become China’s biggest internet sensation after her satirical rants on topics of popular culture went viral on Youku (A Chinese version of YouTube) earlier this year.
  • (10) The satirical animus is what vibrates the molecules.
  • (11) Vice, folly and humbug – it is the point of satire really.
  • (12) So yes, it might sound far-fetched, the sort of proposal that lends itself to endless satire from the triumphalist neoliberal right.
  • (13) Dan Heymann, a reluctant army conscript, wrote the brutally satirical Weeping for His Band Bright Blue .
  • (14) So we’re eagerly awaiting Mike Bartlett’s darkly satirical verse drama.
  • (15) But Oliver now seems to have accepted his fate as a satirical news anchor who covers the Trump campaign, wading into the recent phallus-based Trump news in his headlines section on Sunday night.
  • (16) "But I think, as comics, we need to be braver and address what's happening in the world, and in this country, with satire based on real knowledge of the political situation."
  • (17) We wear its many dysfunctions as a badge of honour, proudly swapping real-life stories that elsewhere in the world would belong in the realms of sci-fi or satire.
  • (18) In a related development, on Saturday, I was supposed to host a discussion with Roger Drew, a writer on the political satire The Thick of It , about the 2012 Leveson-inspired Goolding inquiry episode .
  • (19) Laughing in the face of danger: the state of satire in the Muslim world Read more “The importance of satire is bringing more people to the table.
  • (20) The game's co-writer Dan Houser has described it as a satire on Los Angeles, and more specifically a modern Hollywood fading into insignificance in an era of outsourced production.