understate
IPA: ˈʌndɝsteɪt
verb
- (transitive) To state (something) with less completeness than needed; to minimise or downplay.
- (transitive) To state (something) with a lack of emphasis, in order to express irony.
- To state a quantity that is too low.
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Examples of "understate" in Sentences
- In what ways do these data overstate or understate the degree of upward mobility in the economy?
- I continue to agree with Hall and Murphy, who argue that firms use stock options to understate employee costs.
- 'I understate my case to say that it is one of the most shallow speeches by a supposedly serious politician that I have ever read.
- In other words, to say only that Warmers are greatly exaggerating the impact of carbon dioxide to global warming is to understate the extent of their deceit.
- According U.S. government data, China's holdings of Treasury securities totaled $1.159 trillion at the end of May, although those estimates are thought to understate the true total.
- You spend your life railing against central economic planning, and you need a conspiracy theory to explain why an economic projection was wrong? should be "understate," or "underestimate."
- Omaha, Neb.-based ConAgra Foods Inc., a company that provides pizzas to schools, said it opposes the USDA plan because it would "understate the amount of tomato products…actually consumed."
- Most religious switching occurs before the age of thirty, but to the extent that switching also occurs later in life, these comparisons tend to understate the long-term rise in switching, since the cohorts born late in the twentieth century have had less time to switch than those born earlier.
- It took King Henry VIII's want of a divorce and Martin Luther's offense at the Pope's transgressions to prompt the translation of the religious scriptures into English and German, which is not to ignore or understate similar problems with the Holy Bible, the core document of the Latin Church, which had its own linguistic odyssey making its way from the mystery of the Classic Greek to the vulgarity of common understanding.
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