Oxymoron: Difference between revisions

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	:"And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true"		:"And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true"

	==Examples==
	===Deliberate Use of Oxymoron===
	*"O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!" ], ''Devotions on Emergent Occasions''
	*"I do here make humbly bold to present them with a short account of themselves... " ]
	*"The bookful blockhead, ignoriantly read, / With loads of learned lumber in his head..." ]
	*"He was now sufficiently composed to order a funeral of modest magnificence..." ]
	*"O anything of nothing first create! / O heavy lightness, serious vanity! / Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! / Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!" ] ''Romeo and Juliet'', Act 1, scene 1
	===Examples of Perceived Oxymoron===
	There is a class of expressions that are often labeled oxymora but are actually not. Rather, the speaker retrofits the concept of the oxymoron onto the term, often intending humor from the resulting observation. Usually such perceived oxymora depend on substitution of an alternate meaning for the noun in the phrase (e.g. "old news", where the word "news" is interpreted as "new" rather than "information"). Some humorists create jokes around such perceived oxymora:

	*Christian Science
	*Civil libertarian
	*Corporate ethics
	**Also legal ethics, et cetera
	*] ]
	*Microsoft Works
	*Military intelligence
	*] ]

	] made an extensive list of oxymora in his book '']''.

	==See also==		==See also==

Revision as of 08:26, 21 January 2006

An oxymoron (plural "oxymora" or "oxymorons") (noun) is a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms (e.g. "deafening silence"). Oxymoron is a Greek term derived from oxy ("sharp") and moros ("dull"). Oxymora are a proper subset of the expressions called contradiction in terms. What distinguishes oxymora from other paradoxes and contradictions is that they are used intentionally, for rhetorical effect, and the contradiction is only apparent, as the combination of terms provides a novel expression of some concept.

The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective–noun combination. For example, the following line from Tennyson's Idylls of the King contains two oxymora:

"And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true"

Revision as of 08:26, 21 January 2006

See also