<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article may contain indiscriminate, excessive, or irrelevant examples . Please improve the article by adding more descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples . See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further suggestions . (August 2015) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article may contain indiscriminate, excessive, or irrelevant examples . Please improve the article by adding more descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples . See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further suggestions . (August 2015) </Td> </Tr> <P> In rhetoric, litotes (/ ˈlaɪtətiːz /, US: / ˈlɪtətiːz / or / laɪˈtoʊtiːz /) is a figure of speech that uses understatement to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, often incorporating double negatives for effect . For example, "He's not bad looking" could express that someone is gorgeous--or could convey that he's neither particularly ugly nor attractive . The degree of emphasis depends on context . For instance, the commonly used phrase "not bad" can indicate that something is either average or excellent . Along the same lines, litotes can be used to diminish the harshness of an observation; "He isn't the cleanest person I know" could be used as a means of indicating that someone is a messy person . </P> <P> The term is generally synonymous with meiosis, which means to diminish the importance of something, often at the expense of something else . </P>

Where did the saying not too shabby come from