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Oxymoron

rhetorical device that uses an ostensible self-contradiction to illustrate a rhetorical point or to reveal a paradox

An oxymoron (plural oxymora or oxymorons) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to be contradictory. Oxymora appear in a variety of contexts, including inadvertent errors (such as "ground pilot") and literary oxymorons crafted to reveal a paradox. oxymoron is figure of speech in which two words with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect. It is also a contradiction in term. Related terms are oxymoronic, oxymoronically and oxymoronicness.

Frosty Burn is an oxymoron

Quotes

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Oxymoron by Acke Hydén (sv), Landskrona konsthall (sv)
 
Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have. - Dr. John C. Maxwell.
 
...While there is actual Oxymoron in the second of these lines, we have, in the first, not an actual oxymoron but what may be called an expanded oxymoron. - Kenneth Muir.
 
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings though has perfected praise... is the perfect oxymoron.
  • In terms of the romantic kind of lead, I just never enjoy those movies very much. Maybe they'll come to interest me more as I get older. I doubt it, but maybe. Romantic comedies tend to be, for me, an oxymoron.
  • Radical superman is a desirable oxymoron, a client that expresses the human desire to escape a natural tradeoff by taking both sides of a mutually exclusive dichotomy. Besides "radical superman," other examples of the desirable oxymoron are “science fiction”, “liberal democracy”, and “academic freedom”.
  • Because the oxymoron introduces an unresolvable contradiction, it poses a problem in logic but not necessarily in tropics. If the desirable oxymoron is a representation, it can be dialectically resolved into two aspects of some greater truth.
  • Plantation forests and Biodiversity: Oxymoron or Opportunity?
    • [[E.G.Brockerhoff] in:"Plantation Forests and Biodiversity: Oxymoron or Opportunity?: Oxymoron Or Opportunity?", p. 1.
  • The rhetorical figure that summarizes the idea of semantic paradox is the oxymoron. An oxymoron is an opposition between a term and the qualification that is given it, or between two qualities attributed to a single term, or between the simultaneous denial and assertion of the same fact or concept. The Greek expression “to oxymoron” refers, literally, to the “acutely mad”. The oxymoron is the essence of semantic contradiction whose variants are the paradox and the antithesis. Oxymoron is a semantic approximation of opposites.
  • In the visual version of oxymoron, the material of which a thing is made (or appears to be made) takes the place of the adjective, and the thing itself (or thing represented) takes the place of the noun.
  • 'Doing your own thing' and being a Christian is an oxymoron. As Christians, every day we need to be presenting ourselves before the Lord, thanking Him for His mercy and asking Him to make us more like Him by emptying us of our will, so God's will can be done.
  • In the church scene in the [Shakespeare's] Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio rejects the supposedly evil hero:But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! Farewell,
    Though pure impiety and impious purity!
    While there is actual Oxymoron in the second of these lines, we have, in the first, not an actual oxymoron but what may be called an expanded oxymoron.
 
Romeo and Juliet, Act 1. Scene 1, in which Romeo utters nine oxymora in just six lines of soliloquy: ...-William Shakespeare.
  • 'Feminist comedy,' practically an oxymoron, had a couple of good years after WWII. Chalk it up to the forced female autonomy that occurred during wartime, when Rosie the Riveter went to work in the factories, constructing the Allies' war machines while taking charge of the finances, the home, and the children.

Shemrock Play Schools

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Single-word Oxymora Composed of Dependent Morphemes are: wise fool; pianoforte, soft-loud, preposterous ("before-after"),, and superette ("big-small") - Richard Lederer.

Richard Lederer in:Shemrock Play Schools,fun-with-words.com

  • The word oxymoron is itself oxymoronic because it is formed from two Greek roots of opposite meaning, 'oxys' "sharp, keen," and 'moros' "foolish," the same root that gives us the word moron.
  • Single-word Oxymora Composed of Dependent Morphemes are: wise fool; pianoforte, soft-loud, preposterous ("before-after"),, and superette ("big-small").
  • Logological Oxymora are words as surface letter combinations such as nook joins the opposing words no and OK, and the name Noyes, no and yes.
 
Natural Oxymora are in pairs such as: inside out, student teacher, working vacation, small fortune, industrial park, open secret,...-Richard Lederer.
  • Conversion Puns are a group of oxymoronic pairs that rely on the coexistence of two parts of speech for the same word. Examples are: press release, kickstand, divorce court, building wrecking and White Rose.
  • Dead Metaphors, which are emptied of original meaning, are: Fabulous (fable and awful), awful(ly) good, terribly good, damned good, many fewer, barely clothed, exactly wrong, clearly obfuscating, far nearer, kind of cruel, hardly easy, a little big, growing small, wicked good (product of American slang)
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