Student Question
What are some examples of oxymorons used in everyday language and their meanings?
Quick answer:
Oxymorons are figures of speech that combine contradictory terms to create a new meaning. Common examples include "jumbo shrimp," where "jumbo" means large and "shrimp" means small, and "act natural," where acting contradicts natural behavior. Other examples are "loud silence" and "military intelligence," which are used humorously or to provoke thought. Oxymorons are often employed in literature to create memorable images, as seen in Shakespeare and John Donne's works.
An Oxymoron is a contradiction in terms. It can be a word or a phrase that
have two parts that seem not to go together but somehow do.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary uses the example "Cruel
Kindness." "Cruel" and kindness are two opposite words, but kindness can be
cruel in certain sitations. There are many other examples. Here are a
few:
- Jumbo shrimp- jumbo means big and shrimp means small, but there are some shrimp that are relatively large, so they are called "Jumbo."
- Act natural- how can one "act natural" when acting is itself unnatural?
- Loud silence- silence is... silent. But it can be very loud
There is a long list of possible oxymorons on the website attached below. Sometimes whether something is an oxymoron depends on perspective. "Good morning" might be an oxymoron to someone who despises mornings and considers them anything but good.
Once you get familiar with...
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oxymorons, you will start seeing them in literature everywhere, especially with authors who like to play with words, such as Shakespeare.
I'll be facetious for a moment and give you an oxymoron we liked to use when I was in the Army--whenever any showed up from the office of Military Intelligence, we used to laugh a lot in the believe that it made no sense to yoke the word "military" with "intelligence."
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two contradictory terms are joined, for example:
from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, we have "O loving hate," "O heavy lightness," "cold fire," and "sick health." Â All of these constructions are contradictory and should cancel each other out, but because they make one stop and think about the image, usually succeed in creating a meaningful image in the reader's mind.
from John Done, "O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches! (Devotions upon Emergent Occasions)--the images created are fresh and striking because the reader has to stop for a second and conceptualize what a "miserable abundance" might mean--in this case, most likely, "I'm wealthy but take no pleasure in my riches."
An oxymoron is usually meant to stop a reader in his or her tracks to visualize the image created by the oxymoron, and if it is a successful use of the rhetorical technique, the image becomes memorable and perfectly appropriate for the context.