Oxymoron

This article is about the contradiction in terms. For the 3 Taxonomy

punk band, see Oxymoron (band). For the album by
rapper Schoolboy Q, see Oxymoron (album).
Richard Lederer assembled a taxonomy of oxymora in
an article in Word Ways in 1990,[3] running from singleAn oxymoron (plural oxymora or oxymorons) is a word oxymora such as "pianoforte" (literally, soft-loud)
gure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to through "doublespeak oxymora (deliberately intended to
be contradictory. Oxymora appear in a variety of con- confuse) and opinion oxymora (editorial opinions detexts, including inadvertent errors (such as ground pi- signed to provoke a laugh). In general, oxymora can be
lot) and literary oxymorons crafted to reveal a paradox. divided into expressions that were deliberately crafted to
be contradictory and those phrases that inadvertently or
incidentally contain a contradiction, often as a result of a
punning use of one or both words.
1 Types
The most common form of oxymoron involves an
adjectivenoun combination of two words. For example, 4 Apparent oxymora
the following line from Tennyson's Idylls of the King conMany oxymora have been popularised in vernacular
tains two oxymora:
speech. Examples include controlled chaos, an honAnd faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
ourable death, open secret, organized mess, alone
in a crowd, and accidentally on purpose.
Other examples of oxymora of this kind include:
There are also examples in which terms that are supercially contradictory are juxtaposed in such a way that
Dark light
there is no contradiction. Examples include same dier Living dead (but has been used for a type of super- ence, jumbo shrimp, and hot ice (where hot means
natural being)
stolen and ice means diamonds, in criminal argot).
Guest host (also: Permanent guest host)
Crazy wisdom

5 Oxymora as paradoxes

Mournful optimist

Writers often use an oxymoron to call attention to an apparent contradiction. For example, Wilfred Owen's poem
"The Send-o" refers to soldiers leaving for the front line,
Less often seen are nounverb combinations of two who lined the train with faces grimly gay. The oxywords, such as the line The silence whistles from moron grimly gay highlights the contradiction between
Nathan Alterman's Summer Night, or in a song title like how the soldiers feel and how they act: though they put
on a brave face and act cheerfully, they feel grim.
Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence".
Violent relaxation (but has been used as a technical
term in development of galaxies)

Oxymora are not always a pair of words; they can also be Similarly, in Henry James' novella The Lesson of the Master, a character is described as dressed in a manner condevised in the meaning of sentences or phrases.
ventionally unconventional, suggesting a tortuous spontaneity. In this way James highlights the contradiction
between the characters desire to appear spontaneous, and
2 Etymology
the eorts she makes to appear so.
Oxymoron is derived from the 5th century Latin oxy- One case where many oxymora are strung together can be
moron, which is derived from the Ancient Greek: found in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo
oxus sharp, keen and mros dull, stupid, mak- declares:
ing the word itself an oxymoron.[1] However, the comO heavy lightness! Serious vanity!
bined Greek form (oxumron) does not in fact
appear in the extant Greek sources.[2]
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
1

7 VISUAL AND PHYSICAL OXYMORA

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold re, sick
health!

Some paradoxical oxymora become clichs:

Deafening silence
Dry drunk
Forward retreat
Irregular pattern
Serious joke
Sweet sorrow
Lead from behind

Terms falsely called oxymora for

rhetorical eect

Although a true oxymoron is something that is surprisingly true, a paradox, Garry Wills has argued that modern usage has brought a common misunderstanding[4] that
oxymoron is nearly synonymous with contradiction.
The introduction of this misuse, the opposite of its true
meaning, has been credited to William F. Buckley.[5]
Sometimes a pair of terms is claimed to be an oxymoron
by those who hold the opinion that the two are mutually
exclusive. That is, although there is no inherent contradiction between the terms, the speaker expresses the opinion
that the two terms imply properties or characteristics that
cannot occur together. Such claims may be made purely
for humorous eect. Comedian George Carlin popularized many examples, such as military intelligence,
freedom ghters, and business ethics. Another example is the term civil war, which is not an oxymoron,
but can be claimed to be so for humorous eect, if civil
is construed as meaning polite rather than between citizens of the same state. Alternatively, such claims may
reect a genuinely held opinion or ideological position.
Well-known examples include claims made against government worker, honest broker, educational television, "Microsoft Works", and working from home.

Oxymoron by Acke Hydn, Landskrona konsthall

Examples include waves in the sand, a fossil tree, and

topiary representing something solid like an ocean liner.
Hughes lists further examples of oxymoronic objects,
including:[7]
Articial grass
Bricked-up windows
Ceramic eggs to persuade hens to lay
Electric candles
Floating soap
Invisible ink
Joke rubber coat hooks

Visual and physical oxymora

In his book More on Oxymoron, the artist Patrick Hughes

discusses and gives examples of visual oxymorons. He
writes:
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.[6]

Plastic glass (for drinking)

Plastic lemons
Rubber bones for dogs
Solid water (ice)
Solid wooden bottle moulds
Wax fruit
Ironwood

Other languages

Oxymora, in the sense of single-word oxymora such as

"pianoforte", are very common in Chinese and neighboring languages such as Japanese, and consist of two opposing Chinese characters. Archetypal examples include
(man and woman, male and female, gender),
(yin and
yang),
(good and evil, morality), and are used to indicate couples, ranges, or the trait that these are extremes
of.

See also
Auto-antonym
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
Contradictio in terminis
Irony
Paradox
Performative contradiction
Pleonasm (redundant phrases)
Retronym (some retronyms form oxymorons).
Sarcasm
Self refuting idea
Tautology
Wooden iron

10

References

[1] in Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert

(1940) A GreekEnglish Lexicon, revised and augmented
throughout by Jones, Sir Henry Stuart, with the assistance
of McKenzie, Roderick. Oxford: Clarendon Press. In
the Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. Retrieved
2013-02-26.
[2] oxymoron |accessdate 26 February 2013. Oxford English Dictionary.
[3] Richard Lederer, Oxymoronology Word Ways: The
Journal of Recreational Linguistics, 1990, reprinted on
fun-with-words.com
[4] Wills watching by Michael McDonald. The New Criterion. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
[5] "Daredevil - Garry Wills. The Atlantic. 2009-07-01. Retrieved 2012-03-27.

[6] Hughes, Patrick (1984). More on Oxymoron (PDF).

Jonathan Cape Ltd. p. 47. ISBN 0-224-02246-6.
(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.) According to Hughes websiteBooks authored
or co-authored by Patrick Hughes. Retrieved 7 October
2010.
[7] Hughes, Patrick (1984). More on Oxymoron. Jonathan
Cape Ltd. p. 72. ISBN 0-224-02246-6.

11 Further reading
Shen, Yeshayahu (1987). On the structure and understanding of poetic oxymoron. Poetics Today
8 (1): 105122. doi:10.2307/1773004. JSTOR
1773004.

12

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12.1

TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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Oxymoron Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron?oldid=676088204 Contributors: The Epopt, Sjc, Ortolan88, Jaknouse, DevilRaysFan, Michael Hardy, IZAK, Pagingmrherman, KAMiKAZOW, Ffx, Nikai, Netsnipe, Cadr, Andres, Smack, Nohat, Dandrake,
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