Oxymorons are words that communicate contradictions.
Anoxymoron (plurals:oxymorons andoxymora) is afigure of speech thatjuxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is aself-contradiction. As arhetorical device, an oxymoron illustrates a point to communicate and reveal aparadox.[1][2] A general meaning of "contradiction in terms" is recorded by the 1902 edition of theOxford English Dictionary.[3]
The termoxymoron is first recorded as Latinized Greekoxymōrum, inMaurus Servius Honoratus (c. AD 400);[4] it is derived from theGreek wordὀξύςoksús "sharp, keen, pointed"[5] andμωρόςmōros "dull, stupid, foolish";[6] as it were, "sharp-dull", "keenly stupid", or "pointedly foolish".[7] The wordoxymoron isautological, i.e., it is itself an example of an oxymoron. The Greek compound wordὀξύμωρονoksýmōron, which would correspond to the Latin formation, does not appear in any Ancient Greek works prior to the formation of the Latin term.[8]
Oxymorons in the narrow sense are a rhetorical device used deliberately by the speaker and intended to be understood as such by the listener. In a more extended sense, the term "oxymoron" has also been applied to inadvertent or incidental contradictions, as in the case of "dead metaphors" ("barely clothed" or "terribly good"). Lederer (1990), in the spirit of "recreational linguistics", goes as far as to construct "logological oxymorons" such as reading the wordnook composed of "no" and "ok" or the surnameNoyes as composed of "no" plus "yes", or refers to some oxymoronic candidates as puns through the conversion of nouns into verbs, as in "divorce court", or "press release". He refers to potential oxymora such as "war games", "peacekeeping missile", "United Nations", and "airline food" as opinion-based, because some may disagree that they contain an internal contradiction.[9]
There are a number of single-word oxymorons built from "dependent morphemes"[9] (i.e. no longer a productivecompound in English, but loaned as a compound from a different language), as withpre-posterous (lit. "with the hinder part before", comparehysteron proteron, "upside-down", "head over heels", "ass-backwards" etc.)[10] orsopho-more (an artificial Greek compound, lit. "wise-foolish").
The most common form of oxymoron involves anadjective–noun combination of two words, but they can also be devised in themeaning of sentences or phrases. One classic example of the use of oxymorons in English literature can be found in this example fromShakespeare'sRomeo and Juliet, whereRomeo strings together thirteen in a row:[11]
O brawling love! O loving hate! 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! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Other examples from English-language literature include: "hateful good" (Chaucer, translatingodibile bonum)[12] "proud humility" (Spenser),[13] "darkness visible" (Milton), "beggarly riches" (John Donne),[14] "damn with faint praise" (Pope),[15] "expressive silence" (Thomson, echoingCicero'sLatin:cum tacent clamant,lit. 'when they are silent, they cry out'), "melancholy merriment" (Byron), "faith unfaithful", "falsely true" (Tennyson),[16] "conventionally unconventional", "tortuous spontaneity" (Henry James)[17] "delighted sorrow", "loyal treachery", and "scalding coolness" (Hemingway).[18]
In literary contexts, the author does not usually signal the use of an oxymoron, but in rhetorical usage, it has become common practice to advertise the use of an oxymoron explicitly to clarify the argument, as in:
"Voltaire [...] we might call, by an oxymoron which has plenty of truth in it, an 'Epicurean pessimist.'" (Quarterly Review vol. 170 (1890), p. 289)
In this example, "Epicurean pessimist" would be recognized as an oxymoron in any case, as the core tenet ofEpicureanism isequanimity (which would preclude any sort ofpessimist outlook). However, the explicit advertisement of the use of oxymorons opened up a sliding scale of less than obvious construction, ending in the "opinion oxymorons" such as "business ethics".
J. R. R. Tolkien interpreted his own surname as derived from theLow German equivalent ofdull-keen (High Germantoll-kühn) which would be a literal equivalent of Greekoxy-moron.[19]
"Comical oxymoron" is a humorous claim that something is an oxymoron. This is called an "opinion oxymoron" by Lederer (1990).[9] The humor derives from implying that an assumption (which might otherwise be expected to be controversial or at least non-evident) is so obvious as to be part of thelexicon. An example of such a "comical oxymoron" is "educational television": the humor derives entirely from the claim that it is an oxymoron by the implication that "television" is so trivial as to be inherently incompatible with "education".[20] In a 2009 article called "Daredevil",Garry Wills accusedWilliam F. Buckley of popularizing this trend, based on the success of the latter's claim that "an intelligent liberal is an oxymoron".[21]
Examples popularized by comedianGeorge Carlin in 1975 include "military intelligence" (a play on the lexical meanings of the term "intelligence", implying that "military" inherently excludes the presence of "intelligence") and "business ethics" (similarly implying that the mutual exclusion of the two terms is evident or commonly understood rather than the partisananti-corporate position).[22]
Similarly, the term "civil war" is sometimes jokingly referred to as an "oxymoron" (punning on the lexical meanings of the word "civil").[23]
Other examples include "honest politician", "affordable caviar" (1993),[24] "happily married" and "Microsoft Works" (2000).[25]
Listing of antonyms, such as "good and evil", "great and small", etc., does not create oxymorons, as it is not implied that any given object has the two opposing properties simultaneously. In some languages, it is not necessary to place a conjunction likeand between the two antonyms; such compounds (not necessarily of antonyms) are known asdvandvas (a term taken fromSanskrit grammar). For example, in Chinese, compounds like 男女 (man and woman, male and female, gender), 陰陽 (yin and yang), 善惡 (good and evil, morality) are used to indicate couples, ranges, or the trait that these are extremes of. The Italianpianoforte orfortepiano is an example from a Western language; the term is short forgravicembalo col piano e forte, as it were "harpsichord with a range of different volumes", implying that it is possible to play both soft and loud (as well as intermediate) notes, not that the sound produced is somehow simultaneously "soft and loud".
^Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879)."A Latin Dictionary". Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved27 October 2015.acutely silly: oxymora verba,expressions which at first sight appear absurd, but which contain a concealed point; so especially of such apparently contradictory assertions as: cum tacent clamant, etc.
^"A figure of speech in which a pair of opposed or markedly contradictory terms are placed in conjunction for emphasis"OED
^Honoratus onAeneid 7.295,num capti potuere capi (in the voice ofJuno) "Could captured slaves not be enslaved again?" (William 1910):capti potuere capi, cum felle dictum est: nam si hoc removeas, erit oxymorum. "the captured can be captured: said with bitterness, for if you were to remove that, it would beoxymorum." see H. Klingenberg in Birkmann et al. (ed.),FS Werner, de Gruyter (1997),p. 143.
^ὀξύμωρος inLiddell andScott. Retrieved 26 February 2013. "Pointedly foolish: a witty saying, the more pointed from being paradoxical or seemingly absurd."
^"closely related to hysteron proteron, it shouldn't beass backward, which is the proper arrangement of one's anatomy, to describe things all turned around. For that state of disarray the expression should beass frontward."Richard Lederer,Amazing Words (2012),p. 107.
^"Poverte is hate[fu]l good", glossedSecundus philosophus: paupertas odibile bonum; the saying is recorded byVincent of Beauvais as attributed toSecundus the Silent (also referenced inPiers Plowman).Walter William Skeat (ed.),Notes on the Canterbury Tales (Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer vol. 5, 1894),p. 321.
^Epithalamion (1595), of feminine virtue, echoed by Milton as "modest pride". Joshua Scodel,Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature (2009),p. 267.
^Geneviève Hily-Mane,Le style de Ernest Hemingway: la plume et le masque (1983),p. 169.
^see e.g. Adam Roberts, ^The Riddles of The Hobbit (2013), p. 164f; J. R. Holmes inJ.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2007),p. 53. It has been suggested that the actual etymology of the Tolkien surname is more likely from the village of Tolkynen inRastenburg,East Prussia. M. Mechow,Deutsche Familiennamen preussischer Herkunft (1994), p. 99.
^"Hosted for 33 years by the conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., the show [Firing Line taped its final installment [... in 1999.] The show was spawned in the earnest mid-'60s, before popular culture swallowed up the middlebrow and 'educational TV' became a comical oxymoron."Time Volume 154,Issues 18-27 (1999), p. 126.
^According to Wills, Buckley has "poisoned the general currency" of the word oxymoron by using it as just a "fancier word for 'contradiction'", when he said that "an intelligent liberal is an oxymoron". Wills argues that use of the term "oxymoron" should remain reserved for the conscious use of contradiction to express something that is "surprisingly true"."Wills watching by Michael McDonald". The New Criterion. Retrieved27 March 2012.""Daredevil" - Garry Wills".The Atlantic. 1 July 2009. Retrieved27 March 2012. However, the usage of "oxymoron" for "contradiction" is recorded by theOED from the year 1902 onward.
^Discussed by L. Coltheart in Moira Gatens,Alison Mackinnon (eds.),Gender and Institutions: Welfare, Work and Citizenship (1998), p. 131, but already alluded to in 1939 by John Dover Wilson in his edition of William Shakespeare'sKing Richard II (p. 193), in reference to the lineThe King of Heaven forbid our lord the king / Should so with civil and uncivil arms Be rushed upon! :"A quibbling oxymoron: 'civil' refers to civil war; 'uncivil' = barbarous".
^"This opened up an oxymoron too dreadful to contemplate: affordable caviar" (The Guardian, 1993).
^Lisa Marie Meier,A Treasury of Email Humor, Volume 1 (2000), p. 45.
Shen, Yeshayahu (1987). "On the structure and understanding of poetic oxymoron".Poetics Today.8 (1):105–122.doi:10.2307/1773004.JSTOR1773004.
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