This word sounds like it has something to do with moronic cattle. It doesn’t. I have known this word a long time, yet for some reason, I frequently have to remind myself what it means.

The word ‘oxymoron’ is originally derived from the Greek elements: oxy = sharp and moros (moron) = dull (foolish). ‘Oxymoron’ is the singular form, and ‘Oxymora’ (or ‘Oxymorons’) is the plural form. So the word itself means sharp/ dull. Thus, the word oxymoron is itself an oxymoron.

An oxymoron is a combination of contradictory or incongruous words, such as ‘Jumbo Shrimp’ (Jumbo means ‘large’ while Shrimp means ‘small’). ‘Webster’s Dictionary’ states that it is ‘A figure in which an epithet of a contrary signification is added to a word; eg. cruel kindness; laborious idleness.’

Oxymorons are not necessarily mistakes or errors. They make effective titles and appealing phrases, and some are meant to be humorous, such as ‘his performance was greeted with a deafening silence’.

Oxymorons are a subset of the expressions called contradictions in terms. What distinguishes oxymorons from other paradoxes and contradictions is that they are used intentionally, for rhetorical effect, and the contradiction is only apparent, as the combination of terms provides a novel expression of some concept.

The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective-noun combination. For example, the following line from Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’ contains two oxymorons:

‘And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true’.
Wikipedia tells us that oxymorons can also be ‘wooden irons’ in that they are in violation of the principle of contradiction which asserts that nothing can be thought if it contains contradictory characteristics, predicates, attributes, or qualities.

However, the American novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald (pictured above in 1937) is quoted as saying that ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.’ We do live in a paradoxical universe, after all. But that is a subject for another day.

Richard Lederer assembled a taxonomy of oxymorons in an article in Word Ways in 1990– running from single-word oxymorons such as ‘pianoforte’ (literally, ‘soft-loud’) through ‘doublespeak oxymora’ (deliberately intended to confuse; eg ‘the war on terror’) and ‘opinion oxymora’ (editorial opinions designed to provoke a laugh). In general, oxymorons can be divided into expressions that were deliberately crafted to be contradictory, such as the previous Tennyson quote, and those phrases that inadvertently or incidentally contain a contradiction (often as a result of a punning use of one or both words).

Some examples of deliberate oxymorons include:
Forward retreat, accidentally on purpose, following in front, living dead, panicking slowly. ‘Military intelligence’ is one of the many humorous oxymorons popularized by George Carlin; it carries and implies a political judgment, that the military by its nature cannot be intelligent.

The term ‘intelligence’ is re-construed as meaning not ‘information gathering’ but ‘intellectual power’. To claim ‘honest politician’ is an oxymoron is based on the implied understanding that politicians are inherently dishonest.

In popular usage, the term oxymoron is sometimes used more loosely, in the sense of a simple contradiction in terms: ‘mercy killing’, ‘open secret’, or ‘friendly fire’.

An oxymoron may also occur unnoticed when a word or phrase changes meaning. Few people today pay attention to the inherent contradiction in eating with ‘plastic silverware’ or drinking from ‘a plastic glass’, because the word ‘silverware’ has come to mean eating utensils of any composition, and ‘glass’ is commonly used to refer to any cup from which one can drink.

For the reader with time on his or her hands, there are many collected lists of oxymorons available on the net, for example at oxymorons.info and atlantamortgagegroup.com

So, the next time someone says, hey what is an oxymoron anyway? you can offer them your foolish wisdom!