understatement

American  

[uhn-der-stayt-muhnt, uhn-der-stayt-] / ˌʌn dərˈsteɪt mənt, ˈʌn dərˌsteɪt- /

noun

• understatements
  plural

1. the act or an instance of understating, or representing in a weak or restrained way that is not borne out by the facts.

   The journalist wrote that the earthquake had caused some damage. This turned out to be a massive understatement of the devastation.

---

understatement British  

/ ˌʌndəˈsteɪtmənt /

noun

1. the act or an instance of stating something in restrained terms, or as less than it is

---

understatement Cultural  

1. A form of irony in which something is intentionally represented as less than it is: “Hank Aaron was a pretty good ball player.”

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• understatements
  plural

---

Etymology

Origin of understatement

under- + statement

---

Explanation

You make an understatement when you say a lot less than you could. If you say "We didn't do our best" when your team loses 56 to 0, that's quite an understatement. An understatement can be just the thing to make someone feel better. For example, if you are a terrible dancer and everyone seems to be pointing and laughing at you, your friend might say your style is unique. She's not lying, but she is making sad truth easier to deal with. Understatement can also be used humorously — if you have a really difficult, scary experience, you might say, "Well, that was interesting."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

understatement understatements

To say I can relate would be an understatement.

From Salon ● Oct. 12, 2026

By the end, the hyperbolic term “madman” seems like an understatement for Irwin’s subjects, many of whom are, at a minimum, fantasists.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026

“It does not inspire confidence to know that this kind of wild understatement happened,” said Andrew Granato, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in corporate finance and insurance.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026

Pyka's planes are sometimes called large drones, but it seems an understatement: they all have 11.5m wingspans.

From BBC ● Sep. 1, 2026

To say that Barack threw himself into the job would be an understatement.

From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama

As for the camp factor, many massive understatements in the script will trigger appreciative howls of laughter.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 18, 2025

He still brakes for bad puns and double-negative understatements, but he avoids the kind of under-metabolized research that sometimes alienated his early readers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2025

It was one of the greatest understatements of all time.

From BBC ● Aug. 8, 2025

“Obviously, they’re going through some of their own issues,” Maryland coach Mike Locksley said Tuesday in one of the understatements of the college football season.

From Washington Times ● Nov. 14, 2023

I was kept busy devising plausible confirmation of surprising understatements.

From The Professor's Mystery by Wells Hastings

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---