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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, ignorantly 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!" ] ], Act 1, scene 1 | |||
| ==See also== | ==See also== | ||
Revision as of 08:57, 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"
Examples
Deliberate Use of Oxymoron
- "O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!" John Donne, "Devotions on Emergent Occasions"
- "I do here make humbly bold to present them with a short account of themselves... " Jonathan Swift
- "The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, / With loads of learned lumber in his head..." Alexander Pope
- "He was now sufficiently composed to order a funeral of modest magnificence..." Samuel Johnson
- "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!" William Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet", Act 1, scene 1
See also
- List of oxymora
- Grammar
- Language
- Linguistics
- Rhetoric
- Logic
- English language
- English usage
- Fowler's Modern English Usage
- Figure of Speech
- Contradiction
- Inconsistency
- Juxtaposition
- Demagoguery
- Pleonasm