Not bad

Posted by Smokey Stover on April 19, 2007

In Reply to: Not bad posted by mi on April 19, 2007

: I wrote an article and my teacher (i guess he is from US) wrote the comment 'not bad'. does it mean it is just okay or it is actually good?

Actually good, although perhaps not good enough to go out and raise a flag or sing "Hallelujah". This is called "emphasis by negation," an example of the figure of speech called litotes. And I imagine that your teacher is probably from North America, but you should be able to tell just from his accent.
SS