GRE word list

versicolor \VUR-si-kuhl-er\, adjective

1. Changeable in color: versicolor skies.

2. Of various colors; parti-colored: a versicolor flower arrangement.

The three large versicolor flowers opened up with a silky slap…

-- Boris Vian, Foam of the Daze

The versicolor glow of the Algeron Effect, just a few hundred thousand kilometers from the space station, angled through the viewing port and stippled the far wall.

-- David R. George III, Serpents Among the Ruins

Versicolor comes from the Latin roots vers meaning "to turn" and color. It entered English in the 1620s.

litotes \LAHY-tuh-teez\, noun

Understatement, especially that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary, as in “not bad at all.”

Stevens does not allow himself much of the Sublime here, yet it creeps in by negation in the litotes or understatement of the stanza's close.

-- Harold Bloom, Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate

I know it's a textbook example of what lit-crit geeks like to call litotes, a figure of speech in which an affirmative is expressed through the negation of its opposite…

-- Mark Dery, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

Litotes comes from the Greek word litótes which meant "plainness, simplicity."