What is an OXymoron?

Etymology:

From the Greek, "sharp-dull"

Examples and Observations:

• the expressions "act naturally," "random order," "original copy," "found missing," "alone together," "criminal justice," "old news," "peace force," "even odds," "awful good," "student teacher," "definite possibility," "definite maybe," "terribly pleased," "civil war," "real phony," "ill health," "turn up missing," "jumbo shrimp," "loose tights," "small crowd," and "clearly misunderstood"

• "How is it possible to have a civil war?"
  (George Carlin)

• Porky Pig: That's an oxymoron, sir.
  Daffy Duck as Duck Dodgers: What did you call me?
  Porky Pig: An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which contradictory terms are combined, like "free trade" or "compassionate conservatism."
  Daffy Duck as Duck Dodgers: That attitude of yours is killing us in the fly-over states.
  (Duck Dodgers, 2005)

• " . . . that great modern oxymoron 'eco-tourism,' suggesting a four-wheel drive hurrying north up the motorway with three mountain bikes bolted to the back."
  (Ian Jack, "Yours for £1.4m--and You Won't Pay a Penny." The Guardian, Feb. 20, 2010)

• "O brawling love! O loving hate! . . .
  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."
  (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

• "The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep."
  (W.C. Fields)

• "A yawn may be defined as a silent yell."
  (G.K. Chesterton)

• "I hate intolerant people."
  (Gloria Steinem)

• "Oxymoronic humor, which is more cerebral than visceral, can be deliciously tasteful. Stand-up comics have always recognized this:

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering--and it's all over much too soon.
Woody Allen

We sleep in separate rooms, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations. We're doing everything we can to keep our marriage together.
Rodney Dangerfield

Last month I blew $5,000 on a reincarnation seminar. I figured, hey, you only live once.
Randy Shakes

As you can see from these examples, oxymoronic humor is sophisticated humor. It's directed at the most important organ in the human body--the brain. The self-contradictory aspects of oxymoronic humor appeal to a special part of our mental apparatus, a part that enjoys thinking about some of life's most intriguing contradictions and paradoxes."
(Mardy Grothe, Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom from History's Greatest Wordsmiths. HarperCollins, 2004)

• "We picked a bad year to have a good year."
  (Ken Griffey, Jr., in 1994, the year of the major league baseball strike)

• "O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!"
  (John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions)

• "Health food makes me sick."
  (Calvin Trillin)

• "We have to believe in free will. We have no choice."
  (Isaac Bashevis Singer)

• "That building is a little bit big and pretty ugly."
  (James Thurber)

• "'I want to move with all deliberate haste,' said President-elect Barack Obama at his first, brief press conference after his election, 'but I emphasize "deliberate" as well as "haste."'
  
  "It’s not easy to be both deliberate and hasty at the same time unless you are consciously embracing an oxymoron--from the Greek word meaning 'pointedly foolish'--and it is a jarring juxtaposition of contradictory words like 'cruel kindness' and 'thunderous silence.'"
  (William Safire, "Frugalista." The New York Times, Nov. 21, 2008)

• "The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron."
  (George Will)

• "I want to die young at a ripe old age."
  (Ashley Montagu)

• "An oxymoron is formed when two words that don't normally go together are conjoined, creating a compressed paradox. A paradox is interesting because it is false and true at the same time. Paradoxical observations are often extraordinarily thought provoking, helping us see old realities in new ways. Somebody once said--quite wisely--that a paradox is a truth standing on its head to get our attention."
  (Mardy Grothe, Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts from History's Great Wits and Wordsmiths. HarperCollins, 2005)

• "A log palace is an architectural as well as a verbal oxymoron; so is a short skyscraper, or an urban villa."
  (J. F. O'Gorman and Dennis E. McGrath, ABC of Architecture. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1998)

Pronunciation: ox-see-MOR-on

Oxymoron Example List

Here are our top 36 favourite oxymorons – oxymorons in a loose sense of the word:

open secret	larger half	clearly confused
act naturally	alone together	Hell's Angels
found missing	liquid gas	civil engineer
deafening silence	seriously funny	living dead
Microsoft Works	military intelligence	jumbo shrimp
Advanced BASIC	tragic comedy	unbiased opinion
virtual reality	definite maybe	original copies
pretty ugly	same difference	plastic glasses
almost exactly	constant variable	even odds
minor crisis	extinct life	genuine imitation
exact estimate	only choice	freezer burn
free love	working holiday	rolling stop

Your Funny Oxymorons

Here's a selection of some of the best oxymorons that have been sent to us by our visitors:

Great Depression	free trade	peacekeeper missile
sweet tart	crash landing	now then
butt head	sweet sorrow	student teacher
silent scream	taped live	alone together
good grief	tight slacks	living dead
near miss	light tanks	old news
hot chilli	criminal justice	peace force

Plato's view on Poetry

What are the grounds on which Plato attacks poetry? What is the significance of his attack?

In order to understand Plato's attack on poetry as well as his theory of poetry, it must be remembered that the aim of his literary criticism was to educate the youth and form them into good citizens of his ideal state. His was an age of political decline and dissolution. Education was in a poor state. The epics of Homer were an essential part of the school curriculum. They were respected by the Greeks like the Bible, and the influence of the poets was too deep on society. Yet poetry was in a decadent state. This degeneration resulted in much heart-searching and reflection on the part of philosophers and orators who regarded themselves as superior to the poets. Plato also was a philosopher; to prove his superiority over poets, he attacked poetry on four grounds—moral, emotional, intellectual and utilitarian.

(A) Moral Grounds

On moral grounds, Plato attacks poetry as follows :—

(1)     Poetry is not conducive to social morality, as poets pander to the popular taste and narrate tales of man's pleasant vices. This has a demoralising effect. This is more so the case with drama which depends entirely on popular patronage.

(2)     Poets tell lies about gods. Gods and their representative heroes are represented as corrupt, immoral, dishonest in the epics of the poets (notably of Homer). This depraves public taste and morality. Children tend to imitate the doings of gods and other heroes as told to them by their mothers, they fashion their own conduct on what they read. Philosophy alone is the proper subject of study.

(3)     Drama is even more harmful. Judgment in dramatic matters is left to the many, and the result is lawlessness and licence both in theme and expression. Poets and dramatists appeal to the baser instincts of men, their love of the sensational and the melodramatic. The vulgar and the morbid is thus fostered, and a, "sort of evil theatrocracy has taken the place of old aristocracy, with disastrous consequences to national well-being.

(B) Emotional Grounds

The emotional grounds on which Plato objects to poetry are the following:—

(1) The poets are 'divinely inspired'. It means that they do not compose poetry as craft, but by virtue of some impulse of a mysterious, non-rational kind, coming from some supernatural source, outside their own personality. They utter unconsciously what the Muse impels them to say : like fountains they allow to flow out freely what comes to it. Hence' heir pronouncements are unreliable and uncertain. The inspiration may -ease at any moment. There might be some truth in them for they are divinely inspired, but such partial and imperfect truths must be carefully examined. Such truths can be no substitute for knowledge based on reason.

(2)     The poets cannot often themselves explain what they write, for their frenzy is 'non-rational;'. Allegorical interpretations may be clever, but they are useless, as they are beyond the reach of the young and the immature. Even allegorical interpretations cannot justify stories of a baneful nature.

(3)      Barring lyric poetry, which is purely narrative, all other poetry— epic, tragedy and comedy—is imitative, wholly or partially, and all imitative poetry Plato regarded as pernicious. In Imitative poetry, the poet, and the reader as well, identifies himself completely with the fictitious characters of poetry, and such absorption in other personalities is weakening and unhealthy. It enfeebles character and personality, and impairs the single mindedness and integrity of the individual. Imitation soon becomes a second nature and the actor who imitates tends to behave like the object of the imitation. Thus one who imitates a female part tends to grow effiminate. Imitation will make him cowardly, knavish or clownish, if such roles are imitated.

(4)     Since the imitation of lower or baser part of the soul is easier and gives greater momentary pleasure, poets have a tendency to imitate the passionate element and thus abound in the vulgar, the sensational and the corrupt. Reason is thus kept in abeyance and full sway is given to the emotions. Hence poetry leads to loss of balance. In Republic X, Plato condemns poets saying : "they feed and water the passions instead of
drying them up.......... "

(5)     Emotions such as pity and grief should be restrained, but in tragic poetry (tragedy) we give an uncontrolled expression to these emotions and thus play a woman's part.

(C)  Intellectual Grounds

Plato attacks poetry on intellectual grounds as well : poets have no knowledge of truth, for they imitate appearances and not the truth of things, illusions instead of reality. Poets, like painters, imitate the surface of things. Beyond the world of the senses there is another world, the world of ideal reality, where concepts, like truth, virtue, beauty, etc., exist in an ideal form. The phenomenal world is a mere illusion, a reflection or shadow of the ideal world. The poets have no knowledge of reality; they simply imitate the shadowy or the illusionary. Poetry is thrice removed from reality; it cannot be a source of knowledge and truth. It can tell us nothing about the essential reality.

(D)          Utilitarian Grounds

Poetry is the product of futile ignorance. The poet who imitates without really knowing what he is imitating is demonstrating both his lack of useful purpose and his lack of knowledge. Plato is not content with putting the 'imitator', of something below its maker; he also puts the maker below the user. He writes, "there are three arts which are concerned with all things : one which uses, another which makes, a third which imitates them." The poet stands the lowest, for neither does he use, nor does he make, he merely imitates. Poetry can serve no useful, practical purpose; it must not be a part of school curriculum.

At last Plato says that "no poetry should be admitted save hymns to the gods and panegyrics on famous men." The poets may be honoured, but they must be banished from his ideal state.

Conclusion

Plato's attack has caused more misunderstanding than light. During and after the Renaissance, Puritans cited him as an example in their attack on poetry, and lovers of poetry accused him of "a denial of the value of art." For example, Sir Philip Sidney tried to justify Plato by saying that Plato's attack was directed not against poetry but against the abuse of poetry. Nevertheless, Plato's views were conditioned by his age and by certain specific circumstances of his time. And, therefore, his condemnation is not of universal application.

POINTS TO REMEMBER

Plato attacks poetry on personal, moral, emotional, intellectual and utilitarian grounds.

1.         Personal grounds : Poetry in his age, though in a decadent age, was more popular than philosophy and had a captivating influence. Plato being a philosopher wished to prove the superiority of philosophy over poetry.

2.         Moral grounds : Poetry has a demoralizing effect by pandering to the popular taste. Poets tell lies about gods. Dramatic poets encourage lawlessness and licence.

3.         Emotional grounds : Poets write as inspired beings hence non- rationalistic, mad; hence their pronouncements unreliable and uncertain; meaningless, ambiguous statements; imitative poetry pernicious as imitation becomes the second nature of the actor. Reason is kept in abeyance and full play is given to emotion. By rousing pity and fear tragedy enfeebles human personality.

4.         Intellectual grounds : Poets without knowledge of truths, illusive or delusive; poetry thrice removed from reality.

5.         Utilitarian Grounds : Poetry, the product of futile ignorance; Poet is not the real creator but imitator. Poetry can serve no useful, practical purpose.

Paragkumar Dave

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