Misunderstatement

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An understatement made by mistake or that is so extremely understated as to be misleading.

    "To describe it as naïve would be a flagrant misunderstatement, but its sole purpose is to get laughs, and anyone who doubts its ability to do this has only to be reminded that for eighteen years now, day in and day out, " Aaron Slick " has averaged better than three productions every day."

Example

More examples

"To describe it as naïve would be a flagrant misunderstatement, but its sole purpose is to get laughs, and anyone who doubts its ability to do this has only to be reminded that for eighteen years now, day in and day out, " Aaron Slick " has averaged better than three productions every day."

Etymology

From mis- + understatement.

More for "misunderstatement"

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.