Oxymoron

An oxymoron (usual plural oxymorons, more rarely oxymora) is a rhetorical device that uses an
ostensible self-contradiction to illustrate a rhetorical point or to reveal a paradox. A more general
meaning of "contradiction in terms" (not necessarily for rhetoric effect) is recorded by the OED for
1902.

The term is first recorded as latinized Greek oxymōrum, in Maurus Servius Honoratus (c. AD 400);
it is derived from the Greek ὀξύς oksús "sharp, keen, pointed" and μωρός mōros "dull, stupid,
foolish"; as it were, "sharp-dull", "keenly stupid", or "pointedly foolish". The word oxymoron is
autological, i.e. it is itself an example of an oxymoron. The Greek compound word ὀξύμωρον
oksýmōron, which would correspond to the Latin formation, does not seem to appear in any known
Ancient Greek works prior to the formation of the Latin term.

Types and examples

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 word nook as composed of "no"
and "ok" or the surname Noyes as composed of "no" plus "yes", or far-fetched punning such as
"divorce court", "U.S. Army Intelligence" or "press release". There are a number of single-word
oxymorons built from "dependent morphemes" (i.e. no longer a productive compound in English,
but loaned as a compound from a different language), as with pre-posterous (lit. "with the hinder
part before", compare husteron proteron, "upside-down", "head over heels", ass-backwards" etc.) or
sopho-more (an artificial Greek compound, lit. "wise-foolish").

The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective–noun combination of two words, but
they can also be devised in the meaning of sentences or phrases. One classic example of the use of
oxymorons in English literature can be found in this example from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet,
where Romeo strings together thirteen in a row:

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.

Shakespeare heaps up many more oxymorons in Romeo and Juliet in particular ("Beautiful tyrant!
fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest
show!" etc.) and uses them in other plays, e.g. "I must be cruel only to be kind" (Hamlet), "fearful
bravery" (Julius Caesar), "good mischief" (The Tempest), and in his sonnets, e.g. "tender churl",
"gentle thief". Other examples from English-language literature include: "hateful good" (Chaucer,
translating odibile bonum) "proud humility" (Spenser), "darkness visible" (Milton), "beggarly
riches" (John Donne), "damn with faint praise" (Pope), "expressive silence" (Thomson, echoing
Cicero's Latin: cum tacent clamant, lit. 'when they are silent, they cry out'), "melancholy merriment"
(Byron), "faith unfaithful", "falsely true" (Tennyson), "conventionally unconventional", "tortuous
spontaneity" (Henry James) "delighted sorrow", "loyal treachery", "scalding coolness"
(Hemingway).
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 of Epicureanism is equanimity (which would preclude any sort of pessimist 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 the Low German equivalent of dull-
keen (High German toll-kühn) which would be a literal equivalent of Greek oxy-moron.

"Comical oxymoron"

"Comical oxymoron" is a term for the claim, for comical effect, that a certain phrase or expression
is an oxymoron (called "opinion oxymorons" by Lederer (1990)). The humour 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 the lexicon. An example of such a "comical oxymoron" is
"educational television": the humour 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". In a
2009 article called "Daredevil", Garry Wills accused William F. Buckley of popularising this trend,
based on the success of the latter's claim that "an intelligent liberal is an oxymoron."

Examples popularized by comedian George 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 partisan anti-corporate position).

Similarly, the term "civil war" is sometimes jokingly referred to as an "oxymoron" (punning on the
lexical meanings of the word "civil").

Other examples include "healthful Mexican food" (1989), "affordable caviar" (1993), "happily
married" and "Microsoft Works" (2000)

Antonym pairs

Listing of antonyms, such as "good and evil", "male and female", "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 like and between the
two antonyms; such compounds (not necessarily of antonyms) are known as dvandvas (a term taken
from Sanskrit grammar). For example, in Chinese, compounds like 男女 (man and woman, male and
female, gender), 阴阳 (yin and yang), 善恶 (good and evil, morality) are used to indicate couples,
ranges, or the trait that these are extremes of. The Italian pianoforte or fortepiano is an example
from a Western language; the term is short for gravicembalo col piano e forte, as it were "harpiscord
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".
 Logological Oxymora

If we view words as surface letter combinations and disregard meaning, we note that the word nook
joins the opposing words no and OK, and the name Noyes, no and yes. I welcome additional
specimens from Word Ways readers

Literary Oxymora

Brightly crystallized forms of oxymoronic language become art in literature created by our greatest
writers:

hateful good (Chaucer)

proud humility (Spenser)
darkness visible (Milton)
damn with faint praise (Pope)
expressive silence (Thomson)
melancholy merriment (Byron)
falsely true (Tennyson)
parting is such sweet sorrow (Shakespeare)
scalding coolness (Hemingway)

Dead Metaphors

Over time a word may become emptied of its original meaning. Fabulous, for example, no longer
denotes "based on a fable," and awful, for another example, no longer means "awe-inspiring." But
enough of the primordial meaning may respose in a word that it becomes oxymoronic when set
along another word that collides with its earlier signification:

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

Close kin to the first two is wicked good. A product of American slang, in which bad has come to
mean "good" and cool mean "hot," wicked good clearly empties the old meaning from wicked. But
the draining is so contrived that wicked good should perhaps be assigned to the next category.
act naturally
advanced BASIC
almost exactly
alone together
ballpoint
benevolent despot
benign neglect
bittersweet
bridegroom
build-down
butt head
civil engineer
clearly confused
constant variable
crash landing
criminal justice
deafening silence
definite maybe
deliberate speed
elevated subway
even odds
exact estimate
extinct life
final draft
firewater
found missing
free love
free trade
freezer burn
fresh frozen
genuine imitation
global village
good grief
Great Depression
Hell's Angels
hot chilli
idiot savant
industrial park
jumbo shrimp
larger half
light heavyweight
light tanks
liquid gas
living dead
living end
loyal opposition
Microsoft Works
military intelligence
minor crisis
mobile home
near miss
negative growth
now then
old boy
old news
one-man band
only choice
open secret
original copy
peace force
peacekeeper missile
plastic glasses
pretty ugly
random order
recorded live
rolling stop
same difference
seriously funny
sight unseen
silent scream
someone
speechwriting
spendthrift
standard deviation
student teacher
sweet sorrow
sweet tart
taped live
tight slacks
tragic comedy
unbiased opinion
virtual reality
working holiday