Figures of quantity:
Hyperbole: A thousand pardons. I've told you forty times. He was frightened to death. I'd give worlds for it. Haven't seen you for ages.
"One after another those people lay down on the ground to laugh — and two of them died." (“Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning”, Mark Twain).
"There I took out my pig... and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley, twenty feet ahead of his squeal." (O. Henry
Two geological ages later, we heard the soles of Alicus’s shoes scrape the front steps (H. Lee)
Meiosis (understatement, litotes):
"And what did you think of our little town?" asked Zizzbaum, with the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite.
"You've got good water, but Cactus City is better lit up."
"We've got a few lights on Broadway, don't you think, Mr. Platt?"(“The Buyer from Cactus City” by O. Henry).
"She sang listlessly as if she were bored with the whole thing, and the applause she collected could have been packed into a thimble, without overflowing." (Chase)/ he lives a stone's throw from here/ a cat-size pony/ a drop of water
I was half afraid you had forgotten me.
I kind of liked it.
She writes rather too often.
I am not quite too late.
A humorous effect is observed when meiotic devices (words and phrase called 'downtoners' - maybe, please, would you, mind, etc) co-occur witty rough, offensive words in the same utterance:
It isn't any of your business maybe.
Would you mind getting the hell out of my way?
Litotes. This term denotes a specific form of meiosis, not an independent trope. Litotes is expressing an idea by means of negating the opposite idea:
"Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by widows and orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage." (O. Henry)
"... she was not unlike Morgiana in the 'Forty Thieves'." (Dickens)
"And Captain Trevelyan was not overpleased about it." (Christie)
"A chiselled, ruddy face completed the not-unhandsome picture." (Pendelton)
Less obvious examples:
"You wouldn't exactly call Warley heavily industrialized." (Braine)
"His suit... had... that elasticity disciplined only by first-rate tailoring which isn't bought for very much under thirty guineas.!”(Braine)
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