underspeak
Speech that is characterized by understatement.
Noun
- Speech that is characterized by understatement.
- But that really is a piece of marketing underspeak for this fantastic fetid backplot. - 2003, Kate Fowle, Deborah Smith, To be Continued: Artists' Interventions Into the Public Realm, page 55:
- For some people growing up then, Coward was a bit of a mystery: his later plays were not very good; his pose as a model of cool manners was regarded as effete or snobbish; and the well-intentioned determination to get...
- Even the British government's Official History describes Aitken's battle plan uncharitably, "founded on an infantry drill and tactics not yet modified by fresh war experience." Translation from official British...
Origin
From under- + speak.
Verb
- To speak with understatement and/or modesty.
- Dentists often underspeak and therefore underrate dental conditions. Patients interpret these words to mean there is no problem, only to be surprised later when they learn treatment will be required. - 2002, Dental...
- He underspoke them. A chanteuse is supposed to “sell” the song. Andy, like Blossom, stinted the standard, gave it less, in order to give (secretly) more. - 2009, Kenneth Goldsmith, I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy...
- I do beg you to underspeak about the spread or work of I.C.L. - 2018, Norman Percy Grubb, Modern Viking:
- To fail to say enough; to be too taciturn.
- By a remarkable analysis of what he called Churchill's "peculiar gift of overwriting and underspeaking," Burton also managed to leave us — as after one of Sir Winston's own speeches — with a feeling of love and of...
- Ronald Hall, in “Mishearing, Misreading, and the Language of Listening.” focusses on the way Austen's characters underspeak and overhear or overspeak and underhear, causing a comedy of misunderstanding that ultimately...
- A spokesperson should say just enough to get his or her talking points across effectively—and no more. There is a fine line between overspeaking and underspeaking; planning and practice help the spokesperson determine...
- To speak without sufficient emphasis or volume.
- She was obviously nervous, and consequently underacted and underspoke her part several times ; yet, with her musical speech and natural manner, she should be a considerable acquisition to the company. - 1912, The...
- The surest way to make it seem that an actor is overacting and being too noisy is for all the others in the cast to underspeak, clip their words, and underact—not only in relation to the actor in question, but to...
- At one point after the play had been playing for several years, I went to see it, and found that they were all trying to underplay Fonda— even to underspeak him. - 1973, John Springer, Fonda's Films and Careers of...
- To speak at the same time as and more quietly than another.
- Today subliminal messages are sent by “underspeaking" on television, radio, and records and “invisigraph" (invisible messages) on printed ads. - 1985, Richard G. Lazar, Menahem Davyd Lazar, Beyond 1984: The Vassar...
- A good deal of what transpires is characters at cross-purposes, underspeaking, talking past each other. - 2003, Barbara Green, King Saul's Asking, page 34: