In view of what arnie pointed out elsewhere, I begin a thread on oxymorons with this:

spell checker

Went to a restaurant where they offered jumbo shrimp the other night. Suppose that was a better offering than the diet ice cream at home that had freezer burn.

An ad seen in a university alumni magazine, placed there by a dating service targeting the intelligensia, the graduates of elite colleges:

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Want to date someone who knows that open secret is an oxymoron?

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I supposed I'd better post my favourite oxymoron before someone else does:

Military intelligence

arnie, quite some time ago I tried without success to find a remembered quotation. Can you help? It was something to this effect:

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The encyclopedia lists three types of intelligence: "Intelligence - Human", "Intelligence - Animal" and "Intelligence - Military".

My uncle was a perfect example of "Intelligence - Military".

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I've never heard that quote and couldn't find anything by searching. I did find that Groucho Marx is credited with the original -- "Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."

Child proof
Elementary calculus
Deafening silence
Responsible politician
Hopelessly optimistic
Airline food
Diet ice cream
Political science
Clearly misunderstood

corporate ethics

(This link should work for about 2 weeks. If in that time it sends you to the wrong comic, click over to the Nov. 5 strip.)

Small Crowd
Civil War
Safe Sex
Tight Slacks
Working Vacation
British Fashion (oops...sorry guys )

"British Fashion"

American Beer
Italian Army
bacteria culture

And those from the US will appreciate the city named Humble, Texas.

From a Google site, I found one that I use all the time here: Good Grief However, I could argue that there is "good grief", rather than "pathologic grief", but I won't go there.
terribly happy
legally drunk

When I was in 5th grade, my friend's mom wrote her a note explaining her absence from school that said, "Please excuse Patsy's absence from school as she had a terrific stomach ache". I remember Patsy saying to me, "I didn't think it was so terrific"!

An unrelated sidenote to Wordnerd:

The proud people of Humble, Texas pronounce the name of their town as 'umble though I haven't the slightest idea why. That part of the country is otherwise completely non-British.

Alone together

Personal computer

Same difference

Peace force

Healthy tan

"Quad bike"

Richard English

Act naturally

Terribly pleased

Pretty ugly

More perfect

Definite maybe

I suspect there's some fancy greek term for the poetic pairing of two contradictory terms, such as "exquisite agony".

And by the way, I though that phrase is rattling around the back corners of my mind, I have no idea where it comes.

Wordnerd, I know exactly where you heard the term "exquisite agony"! The person who wrote it is a favorite of mine and (hint coming) I have all his albums.

(Heh, heh, heh...)

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..."exquisite agony"! The person who wrote it is a favorite of mine and (hint coming) I have all his albums.

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Tom Lehrer?

You got it in one!

The phrase (with "agony" pronounced "AH-gony") is from the song "The Masochism Tango." I may be mixing lines a bit but, to the best of my recollection, that section went:

Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany.
That's why I'm in such exquisite agony.
You can raise welts like nobody else
As we dance to The Masochism Tango!

Along with Ambrose Bierce, mentioned elsewhere, Tom Lehrer is one of my favorite writers.

Mmmm.

I'd say that anyone who can rhyme "agony" with "mahogany" has a rare talent.

Possibly not rare enough.

Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur

Read all about my travels around the world here.

It was, in fat, rare for Tom Lehrer to try to force a rhyme. Most of his lyrics scan and rhyme perfectly. Many of them are expremely clever but sadly, all to rarely played, even in these "enlightened" days.

In his heyday, of course, just about all his works had the BBC's special green sticker which meants "do not play without special permission".

Richard English

Did you ever think about non-dairy creamer?

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Did you ever think about non-dairy creamer?

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I try not to.

I don't know that this is an oxymoron. It is usually used to describe a person who, although lacking in certain "normal" human characteristics, is especially gifted in one particular aspect.

The main character in the film "Rainman" was one such.

I suggest that the term is properly used in this way and not self-contradicting as it would be were it oxymoronic.

Richard English

Non-USn's may not be aware that our annual Thanksgiving feast, recently completed, suffers a problem so common and recurrent that it has become a rueful joke: the leftovers. In particular, the host home groans under a mountain of leftover turkey that, in the next few weeks, overwhelms the cook's ability to devise a reasonable variety of uses.

But there are compensating benefits. It would be oxymoronic to speak of "too much dessert".

Richard, I quite agree with you that idiot savant is a different sort of "self-contradiction" than the usual oxymoron. I don't know whether the term oxymoron, in hyper-precise usage, is broad enough to cover each sort.

Checking, I find that some of the dictionaries define it to include an apparent contradiction -- even if the appearance is ultimately resolvable. But only "some".

Incidently, oxymoron is itself an oxymoron:
from Greek oxus = sharp + moros = dull, foolish

This thread reminds me of a little chant we used to sing as kids:

One dark morning, in the middle of the night
Two dead boys began to fight
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
and came and killed those two dead boys

But I think we are forgetting here how beautiful oxymorons can be.... how they can poetically point towards the paradoxes of life

Consider Romeo when he says:

Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything of nothing first create;
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!

Well done, Muse! Hence the term, hopeless romantic

The word jihad, from arabic, means "holy war".

A horrible, bone-chilling oxymoron.

On a lighter note......

Our cat (Exec. Dir.) is away so we mice do play! At lunch today someone was late getting to the meal that had been catered in. She said, "But I was doing important work for our department!" Laughter by all--isn't that really an oxymoron?!

Want to date someone who knows that open secret is an oxymoron?
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Actually, there's a brand of deodorant named SECRET, so an open can of it would indicate that one wishes to date someone who doesn't stink.

Just this morning, in a news report about a major fire in downtown St. Louis, a representative from the fire department told a reporter that the firefighters were in a defensive attack mode in relation to their attempts to fight the fire.

He said this with a completely straight face so I assume that there is such a thing. Every profession has its jargon.

Which brings to mind the question: If your profession was that of a cheesemaker, would the various terms you used specific to your work be known as "jargonzolla"?

(...No, I suppose not.)

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Originally posted by CJ:
If your profession was that of a cheesemaker, would the various terms you used specific to your work be known as "jargonzolla"?

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The Gorgons of greek myth were the three sisters Sthenno, Euryale and Medusa, each so hideous that the shock of seeing them would turn anyone to stone. Nowadays Medusa is the most familiar, but it is a little known fact that in the late 1800's Sthenno achieved renown as a novelist, writing in a style imitative of one of the then-current french authors.

Her success rather went to her head. Deeming herself the big cheese of her family, she referred to herself as the Gorgon Zola.

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I suspect there's some fancy greek term for the poetic pairing of two contradictory terms, such as "exquisite agony".

And by the way, I though that phrase is rattling around the back corners of my mind, I have no idea where it comes.

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CJ said this belongs to Tom Lehrer but it kept rattling around in my brain too. I remembered this morning! (Imagine light bulb appearing over my head). It reminds me of Emerson's 'Thou art to me a delicious torment'! Think maybe Lehrer was paraphrasing?

And the fancy Greek term you were looking for, wordnerd, is the title of this thread!

If your profession was that of a cheesemaker,
would the various terms you used specific to your work be known as "jargonzolla"?
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I would hate to be the pastor of the Church of God in Zillah, Washington. The wild beast of Revelation, perhaps?

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..."exquisite agony"...

CJ said this belongs to Tom Lehrer...

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Did I forget to leave the answer on this one? Sorry, my bad.

The lyric which I believe prompted the memory of that two-word phrase comes from the Tom Lehrer classic "Masochism Tango" where he states:

Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany.
That why I'm in such exquisite agony.
You can raise welts like nobody else
As we dance to the Masochism Tango!

The "agony" is pronounced "AAAH-gony" to make it rhyme.

My very vague recall is that theologians uses the phrase "exquisite agony" to refer to the suffering of Christ upon the Cross.

About a third of the google hits for "exquisite agony" also include the word "cross", although many of them are in unrelated contexts.

One of the definitions the AHD gives for exquisite is "intense; keen: suffered exquisite pain".

Tinman

Reviving our oxymorons (oxymora?):

I see in the news that many of our marines in Iraq debarked from Fort Bliss, Texas.

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Originally posted by shufitz:
I see in the news that many of our marines in Iraq debarked from _Fort Bliss, Texas._

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AUUUGH!! Two hideous words in one day!

"Debarked"??! I had to look this one up since it struck me at first as a (totally unnecessary) shortening of the more correct "disembark" but the dictionaries I checked say both are wrong in the sense given. "Disembark" is defined as to leave a ship or a plane etc for land while "debark" (Brrr! That word's so ugly it gives me chills!) is defined as, among other related senses, "to disembark."

If the Iraq-bound Marines are "debarking" in Fort Bliss (which, I totally agree, is oxymoronic to an extreme, especially if you've ever been there) they are either apparently in the process of deserting or doing some serious damage to the outside layers of trees. My vote would have been for the good old-fashioned "departed" and then, as a bit of polish, to drop the "from" as being redundant.

(See what happens when I'm not consulted on these matters?!)

While away for the weekend, someone wanted to take me for a gourmet hotdog! Talk about an oxymoron!

I read about one today in an article explaining why the French, who eat so much fat, are healthier and thinner than Americans who are always dieting:

Low-Fat Half and Half

QT in the Chicago Sun Times has referenced wordcraft before and periodically refers to wordcrafter's words. Today, he answered a reader's question about what it's called when one word has 2 different pronunciations and meanings, i.e. arithMETic and ARITHmetic; it's called a homograph.

Then QT posed this challenge, of course assuming that no one would get it. We have the most creative people in the world on this site. Let's surprise him!

Can you come up with an oxymoron that contains a homograph and a contranym? Come on, Wordcrafters!

Stumped by Kalleh's challenge, I'll revert to the original broader subject of oxymorons. This one noticed today:

baby grand.

Just today, I heard someone say: "He's a grown man!"

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Just today, I heard someone say: "He's a grown man!"

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Isn't that a tautology rather than an oxymoron ?

Isn't that a tautology rather than an oxymoron ?

In theory? Yes. In reality? No.

As far as tautology, haven't we used another word to indicate redundancy in a phrase? I can't recall what it was.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
Can you come up with an oxymoron that contains a homograph and a contranym? Come on, Wordcrafters!

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Is the answer forthcoming? It doesn't appear that anyone is going to hazard a guess.

Tinman, this would seem to be right up your alley. I would have given it a shot but just reading the question makes my brain hurt!