Definition of "understate" []

• To state with less completeness or truth than seems warranted by the facts. (verb-transitive)
• To express with restraint or lack of emphasis, especially ironically or for rhetorical effect. (verb-transitive)
• To state (a quantity, for example) that is too low: understate corporate financial worth. (verb-transitive)
• To give an understatement. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "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.""
• "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."
• "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."