@Mitch yeah :D

"Help society by dying sooner"

"But not so soon that you haven't contributed anything"

They say quitting smoking is just as hard as kicking a heroine addiction

I've no experience at either :D

Because the molecules of heroine and nicotine are so similar

@skillpatrol I don't think there are enough heroines. Wonder Woman... um .. Florence Nightingale...

Electrawoman and Dynagirl

Bat girl

All the female X-Men

Oh... moms. That would be... current population divided by average children per woman .. calculating

But we all like bad girl :P

!!

Tank Girl :D

Is she named that because she wears a tank top?

which is what 'wife beaters' should be called again instead.

@Mitch maybe. It could be because she collects fish as pets

Or she's been thrown in the drunk tank too many times.

:D

@MattE.Эллен Or she comes from a long line of cesspool cleaners

Or she's foreign and people make fun of her for saying "Thank you" with an accent.

People are so cruel

so cruel

Wall of text incoming. Alert. Alert.

@Spork so after contemplating about it for just a minute on my commute, it's actually insultingly trivial.

Take the German words Handy and Bodybag. They don't mean "handy" and "bodybag". Yet for some — admittedly obvious — reason, they often get translated as "handy" and "bodybag". Now, would it help to call these things "valid translations" just because of that? Of course not, instead the solution is to get them a special label of their own: false friends. And all is fine.

Likewise for "pretty awful" and "pretty hideous". They don't mean "beautiful awful" and "beautiful hideous". (That isn't even grammatical!) Yet for some — admittedly obvious — reason, they often end up on lists of oxymorons. Now, would it help to call these things "valid oxymorons" just because of that? Of course not, instead the solution is to get them a special label of their own. False oxymorons. Or perceived oxymorons. Or blumdongles. What have you. And all will be fine.

Sure enough, as with everything with life, we can think of counterexamples. Take irony. As soon as something is called "ironic", you can expect Five Armies to show up and stage a nauseating two-hour Battle. Legions will fight for calling exactly one thing Irony™, and calling everything else Not Irony™. Their blood will be spilled by other legions fighting for the opposite thing.

Meanwhile everyone will continue to use the word ironic to mean X different things. And all will be fine because every word in every language is allowed to mean X different things.

Oxymorons have no real armies at their disposal one way or the other, not even a scantily-clad bunch of 300. A Spork here and a Robusto there, and that's about it. So whether we'll end up calling false oxymorons false oxymorons, or just use the word oxymoron to mean X different things, is anybody's guess. And who even cares.

Personally, I put my money on ending up calling them irony.

that's ironic

Don't you think?

No, literally. That question is not ironic. It is literal. Do you or do you not think?

See, no answer. People refuse to even parse non-ironic things anymore.

@MattE.Эллен He put all that work into writing out his well-reasoned and insightful comments (which he shouldn't have to do because only idiots should think otherwise) and all you can do is retort with your facile witticisms?

What is work?

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more!

I bet you're a kitten lover.

And no-TV-haver

@RegDwigнt Is Firewater an oxymoron?

@MattE.Эллен Wait! Did you mean that ironically or literally? Choose!

I bet you watch TV standing out in the street, watching through someone's home window

@Cerberus UR an oxymoron!

Oh shit. Jinx.

@RegDwigнt Does firewater mean "flamy water hotter than 200 degrees"?

Irony is literally figurative, like any good oxymoron.

It could be argued that no oxymoron ever takes its components literally, or it would be nonsense.

@Robusto You see, I first typed that exact thing, but then instead, probably because of @Mitch who for some reason requires me to "work", I went searching the transcript for that exact message because I was pretty damn sure I had posted that exact message @Cerberus before.

By your criterion, perhaps all oxymora are "false".

@Cerberus It could as well be argued that everything is just gibberish.

Like those fancy bar drinks that have a little flame on top?

@Robusto It could.

But either words mean something or they don't. I prefer to think they mean something.

@Mitch Those would be a literal oxymoron, perhaps.

The worst thing about all this is: turns out, I never once called Cerberus oxymoron.

So before I go cuddle crying in a corner, I shall say this:

@Robusto Something, or several things?

@RegDwigнt ha ha..I did that? nice

@RegDwigнt But you had the intent to do so, so I will give you partial credit.

You, @Cerberus, is oxymoron.

I am the third person when you addresses me?

@Cerberus Don't be sophomoric.

@Cerberus you are all three persons. Also, all three dogs.

@Robusto Hey, that is another one! Isn't it?

Sophomore, btw, is an oxymoron. You could look it up.

Jinx!

@RegDwigнt You got me there.

@Robusto I ninja'd you muwaha.

Because moros can mean two things.

You wise fool, you.

Sharp of mind and sharp of tip.

Or edge...

OK, now the big issue is which end of the egg do we crack to open it, the big end or the little end?

@Cerberus I see a point in what you're saying, but I also see it being horribly exaggerated ibidem.

Some of what originally were oxymora are no oxymora no more.

Cry me a river! Happens to all figures of speech.

@Robusto What? You don't just peel them?

@Mitch That would be a different sort of heresy.

The end result would be the same, though: we would have to burn you at the stake.

Oh how ironic that would be.

@Robusto which the littleEndians and bigEndians would gang up together to destroy.

@Mitch I can't read what you said, because there is no BOM on that statement.

Here, I use "ironic" to mean "pretty". Which I use to mean "beautiful". Which I use to mean whatever English word there was before it became French.

@RegDwigнt Literal irony or some heretical form of irony?

@Robusto you should get better glasses and read between the electrons

@Robusto pretty irony.

Ugly irony is the only true irony.

Not to be confused with Tom Pretty.

You mean Tom Brady?

No. I never mean cheaters and liars.

Then you never mean anyone.

Congratulations, you can now understand 1% of all Elton John texts.

Like a candle in the wind from an angel's backside. Or something like that.

I heard that Diana had a mean 'wind'

Speaking of backsides, I have to go exercise mine. BBL.

I hope the realization that Your Song is not really your song doesn't strike you too hard.

at least not in the face

Yes, exercise helps with that. I wish you success.

And by you, wish and success I do not mean anyone.

Anyway. I'm off to cuddle in a corner as promised. Wil try not to end up in the same corner where @Matt is cuddling after being chatised by Mitch. That would be too ironic.

@RegDwigнt I do think.

@Robusto Literally ironically

@RegDwigнt Interesting take! It is close to Robusto's comment, that I upvoted: "It's a false oxymoron...". Also interesting that there is a german word Body Bag that is not bodybag... I can understand a fair bit of German (based solely on being dutch) and this is quite a funny false cognate.

You are arguing that it a false oxymoron, which I can sympathize with. In fact, I had read BenHocking's comment and immediately felt that pedantic tingling feeling that said "this guy doesn't even know what an oxymoron is!". But, as I tend to, I researched that 'fact' first, and found that there is a huge number of references including 'pretty ugly' as an oxymoron.

This struck me as being at odds with 'certainly probably' not being an oxymoron, an answer that got +50 on here. I didn't find an answer and posted it here to find out.

@RegDwigнt However, I am now no longer so sure it is, in fact, a false oxymoron at all. You see, the false cognates you put forth as evidence are clearly breaking some 'rule', misattributing meaning to a lemma, but any definition of oxymoron I found does not require the meaning of the lemma to actually be the contradicting.

If you have an open mind for a second, it is actually insultingly trivial to see how misguided one can be by following 'logic' here, when what makes an oxymoron is the human experience of contradiction - not the logical contradiction itself. Deafening silence in fact does not mean that the silence makes anyone deaf, it is a stylistic element to make a reader think, and give greater vehemence to the 'silence'.

This is reached through Positive priming, as psychologists call it, a contradictory thought. That same stylistic goal is reached with 'pretty ugly', which - I believe - is why so many people experience it as an oxymoron.

--- it all leaves me very sad that a clearly wrong answer is being upvoted. My question is considered 'off topic' for no reason at all and is still closed. A simple link here would've been more helpful than the rubbish people agree with without thinking: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron#Apparent_oxymora

(I didn't mean positive priming === contradictory thought, just that the things that are primed by 'pretty' can be contradictory to 'ugly', and that this contradiction could suffice for any definition I've come across)

@Spork I just did the needful and actually read the linked wiki article, and am annoyed by nothing I'm reading connecting with what I thought I knew. (but it the wiki article seems poor quality (its headings seem at odds semantically with the contents of sections, especially 'Apparent oxymora' and 'terms falsely called oxymora for rhetorical effect'.

))

@MattE.Эллен phew! almost got a syntax error there.

:D

@Spork I would call that a stylistic emphasis. I would say that almost all of what you say is true (and well reasoned, congrats) but for the fact that they don't need to be classed as oxymoron to have the effect you describe. In fact, I think it lessens them to think of them that way, strangely enough.

@Robusto would you contest me if I insistently called a platypus an example of a mammal, and argue that it would be better to call it an 'animal', as it doesn't look like a mammal?

@Robusto of course.

@Spork Sorry, not getting your analogy.

Best Pixies tune ever.

:)

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive answer detected: In "That patient merit of th'unworthy takes", what does merit mean exactly? by HFo on english.stackexchange.com

This should prob be protected: english.stackexchange.com/questions/260246/…

18 answers and counting

@Spork I don't understand the hoopla over all this. pretty ugly can be an oxymoron but only if you force it to. Just like cheap dear can be if you take dear to mean expensive. Likewise, pretty ugly can be twisted into an oxymoron if you interpret pretty as an adjective meaning beautiful instead of an adverb synonymous to quite.

That is a non-intuitive reading though, so I don't see why anyone would choose to interpret it so.

@Mazura Can't be protected yet by me. Maybe a mod can.

@Robusto I already flagged it.