What Is the Meaning of an Oxymoron?
- An oxymoron is the conscious combination of two contradictory or incongruous images or ideas that together creates a new overall concept or meaning. Some typical examples include "living death" and the compound word "bittersweet."
- According to both the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, the term "oxymoron" is derived from the late Greek term "oxymoros" that means "pointedly foolish." "Oxys" is a Greek word meaning "sharp" or "keen," and "moro" is a Greek word that means "foolish." In this sense, the term can itself be interpreted as oxymoronic.
- The oxymoron was particularly popular during the late 16th century and throughout the 17th century. In literary terminology, it is regarded as a common type of "Petrarchan conceit" that was frequently used in love poetry to make an unusual and often lengthy comparison between two dissimilar topics or objects. A common and arguably cliché example is the likening of a lover as a ship on a stormy sea with his or her beloved described as a "cloud of dark disdain."
- A popular example is found in the first act of Shakespeare's famous play, "Romeo and Juliet":
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything! of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
(1.1.175-79)
Another frequently cited example is found in Milton's Paradise Lost: "...yet from those flames / No light, but rather darkness visible" (1.62f.). This oxymoron combines the opposite aspects of light and dark into a new concept, which is a darkness that can be seen. - Some terms are mistakenly referred to as oxymoronic in order to claim the figure of speech's rhetorical effect. In these cases, the term is simply contradictory rather than an oxymoron. This often occurs when a comedian claims that a term is oxymoronic, for instance when making jokes about "airline food," "military intelligence," or "American culture." Many terms are technically oxymoronic but their everyday usage does not regard them as such. Some unintentional oxymoronic terms are "friendly fire" and "anecdotal evidence."
