Litotes

litotes (lī`tətēz'), figure of speech in which a statement is made by indicating the negative of its opposite, e.g., "not many" meaning "a few." A form of irony, litotes is meant to emphasize by understating. Its opposite is hyperbole.

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Litotes 

(1) The literary device of understatement, the opposite of hyperbole, used to intensify the descriptiveness and expressiveness of speech. Litotes involves the juxtaposition of two heterogeneous elements based on a common feature that is represented to a much lesser degree in the means of comparison than in the object of comparison. Examples include “a little man the size of a thumbnail” (N. A. Nekrasov), “a waist no thicker than a bottleneck” (N. V. Gogol), “the speed of a tortoise,” and “within arm’s reach.” Structurally, a litotes may take the form of a simile, metaphor, or epithet. A considerable number of turns of speech representing litotes are idiomatic (“money squeezed from a cat’s tears”).

(2) The replacement of an affirmative description with a negation of the contrary—for example, “not stupid” instead of “clever” or “I don’t object” instead of “I agree.”