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Meiosis

A Be-littleing (litotes)

Meiosis is the figure in which one thing is diminished in order to magnify another thing by way of contrast. Bullinger places it among the figures of omission — not of words but of sense: no word is missing, but the writer suppresses the actual measure of the diminished item so that the reader’s attention is directed to its opposite, which thereby appears the greater. Not the smallness of what is lessened is the message, but the greatness of what stands beside it.

Etymology

Greek μείωσις (meiôsis), “diminution”, from the verb μειόω (meioô), “to make smaller”. The figure is also known as λιτότης (litotês) — “plainness”, “simplicity”. The Romans called it diminutio and extenuatio. The distinction from Tapeinosis is exegetically important: in Tapeinosis the same thing is itself magnified through apparent diminution; in Meiosis one thing is diminished in order to magnify another.

Definition

The figure operates by deliberate understatement. Something is presented as less than it is, not from modesty but as a rhetorical lever: by pulling one pole down, the opposite pole rises beyond expectation. Its effectiveness lies in the silent invitation to the reader to restore the actual proportion — and that active correction lends the figure its pedagogical force.

Biblical Examples

Diminution of the self to magnify God’s greatness:

• Gen. 18:27 — Abraham: “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes”. By calling himself “dust and ashes” — alluding to Gen. 2:7 — he contrasts himself with the holy God whom he addresses.
• 1 Kgs. 16:2 — Jehovah uses the same figure against Baasha: “…I exalted thee out of the dust”.
• Ps. 22:6 — “I am a worm, and no man” — used to express a deeper degree of humiliation than words can convey. Cf. Job 25:6, Isa. 41:14. The greater the humiliation, the greater the contrast with His glorification: the “worm” of Ps. 22 is “Jehovah my shepherd” of Ps. 23 and “the King of glory” of Ps. 24.
• Isa. 40:15-17 — “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance… all nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity”. Even this diminution fails to convey the gulf between the finite and the infinite.

Diminution of sin / enemy to magnify God’s grace:

• Num. 13:33 — The spies: “And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” — the Meiosis of unbelief, lessening their own stature to exaggerate the Anakim. Cf. 14:9, where faith speaks the opposite way.
• 1 Sam. 24:14 — David to Saul: “After whom dost thou pursue? After a dead dog, after a flea” — i.e. one who is unworthy game for a king. Cf. 1 Sam. 17:43, 26:20, 2 Sam. 3:8, 9:8, 16:9.
• Ezra 9:8 — “For a little space (Heb. moment) grace hath been shewed from the Lord our God”. The “little space” diminishes not the sin but the duration of prior chastisement, so that the now-given grace stands out the greater.

Apostolic self-diminution:

• 1 Cor. 9:17 — “For if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward” — Paul means gratuitously; he lessens the wording in order to increase the meaning.
• 1 Cor. 15:9 — “I am the least of the apostles” — said to magnify the grace of God (v. 10). To the same Corinthians he could elsewhere say: “I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles” (2 Cor. 11:5).
• Eph. 3:8 — “…unto me, who am less than the least of all saints”. A year later he could call himself “the chief of sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15) — apostolic growth in grace marks this Meiosis.
• Phlm. 11 — “Which in time past was to thee unprofitable” (of Onesimus, who in fact had been a thief).

Misunderstanding / refusal diminished:

• Matt. 15:26 — “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs”. Not only unfair, but cruel.
• Matt. 18:14 — “Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish”. Far more is implied than expressed: predestination, regeneration, deliverance, sanctification, and final preservation.
• Luke 17:9 — “Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not”. I.e. I know well he doth not thank him.
• John 15:20 — “If they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also” — i.e. as surely as they have NOT kept my saying, they will not keep yours. The context forces the Meiosis reading.

Non-people for “we Gentiles”:

• Rom. 10:19 — “I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people” (οὐκ ἔθνος, ouk ethnos, a non-people). Cf. 1 Pet. 2:10: “Which in time past were not a people”.

Diminution of sacrifices / old order:

• Heb. 9:12-13 — “…the blood of goats and calves… the blood of bulls and of goats”. The figure lessens the importance of the old sacrifices in order — by contrast — to magnify the one great sacrifice to which they all pointed.
• Heb. 13:17 — “For that is unprofitable for you”. In reality much more than that: disastrous and ruinous.

Withholding of livelihood diminished:

• 1 John 3:17 — “But whoso hath this world’s good” (Greek τὸν βίον τοῦ κόσμου, ton bion tou kosmou, “the life of the world”). Meiosis: the man who will not even share the means of his own life — how dwells the love of God in him? Cf. v. 16: we ought to lay down our lives (ψυχή, psyche) for the brethren.

Related Figures

• tapeinosis — related but distinct: Tapeinosis magnifies the same thing through apparent diminution; Meiosis magnifies another
• hyperbole — direct opposite: Hyperbole says more than meant in order to magnify; Meiosis says less in order to magnify by diminution
• catabasis — kindred figure of diminution: Meiosis lessens once where Catabasis lessens by stairs across several parallel members
• synecdoche — see Gen. 18:27 (“dust and ashes”)
• hypocatastasis — see Matt. 15:26
• oxymoron — see 1 Cor. 9:17 and 1 Cor. 15:9

Source

E.W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (1898), pp. 155-158.