Perfectly Terrible: The Curious World of Oxymorons

Words That Disagree Beautifully

                                                                                             - Anupama S Mani

It is ‘awfully good’ and ‘terribly nice’ of you to have stopped here. I hope even if the week gave you problems, you remained in ‘comfortable misery’ ‘experiencing a joyful sadness’ and stayed ‘cheerfully pessimistic’. As the week ‘grows smaller’ into the weekend, perhaps your plans are still a ‘definite maybe’, your confidence is powered by ‘artificial intelligence’, and you are hoping for a few ‘minor miracles’. With luck, by Sunday your troubles will seem like ‘virtual reality’, or at least become ‘seriously funny’.

If you think I am being ‘gloriously stupid’, hold that thought, you have ‘clearly misunderstood’ me.

I am just being oxymoronish! But is that even a word?

Like hundreds of other words in the English language, oxymoron is also derived from ancient Greek, where oxys means sharp or clever and moros means stupid or dull, i.e., ‘cleverly dull’. An oxymoron in itself, isn’t it?

All of us use oxymorons which have been used in language since times unknown. Shakespeare seemed incapable of resisting them in his plays and sonnets. In Romeo and Juliet he keeps combining words which pair contrasting expressions, like a literary weapon.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

“O brawling love! O loving hate!”

“A damned saint, an honorable villain!”

Yet they are different from paradox. Of course, both present contradictions. While oxymorons merely pair contradictory words, paradoxes show opposing ideas. Generally, an oxymoron is just two words- ‘deafening silence’, whereas a paradox is a complete sentence, perhaps even an entire paragraph e.g.,

I can resist anything but temptation. (Oscar Wilde) or

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. (Animal Farm by George Orwell).

Oxymorons, a beautiful device in literature or classical poetry and weapon in rhetoric, have found an important place in our modern everyday speech too.

Thus, what to a casual observer may seem illogical, makes sense while seen in context. Oxymorons are the literary equivalent of wearing orange with pink, and somehow making it look elegant. Or even like mixing sweet and sour, somehow the contradiction tastes better than either ingredient alone.

Like ‘act naturally’: if you are acting, you are not presenting your true self, how can it be ‘naturally’ then? Yet the meaning is ‘behave as if this is nothing forced,’ So the deeper meaning is ‘stay calm, and just be yourself’.  

How many times have you said ‘exact estimate’, ‘original copy’, ‘old news’, ‘organized mess’, or ‘pretty ugly’ to express your thought, without realising it? Or freezer burn, crash landing and only option/choice, without realising you were speaking fluent oxymoronese?

When you use Clara Barton’s words, “I distinctly remember forgetting that,” you realise you have used such opposing word pairs several times.

But why do we use them anyway?

For that touch of humour to play with language. George Carlin, one of my favourite comedians, delighted in saying ‘military intelligence’ and ‘business ethics’. When Andy Warhol says, “I am a deeply superficial person,” your lips curl into a smile.

To add a dash of irony because oxymorons are inherently ironic, a perfect tool in politics, which probably explains why politicians are so fond of language. Conservative political writer William Buckley, had said, "An intelligent liberal is an oxymoron."  

When you want to create drama in language. Literature has hundreds of such examples. Of melancholy merriment, to quote.” —Lord Byron, Don Juan: Canto VIII, beggarly riches (Donne 1624) liquid marble (Jonson 1601)

And they are also writers showing off their writing and linguistic skills — in the nicest possible way.  Put two contrasting words together, stop the reader mid-sentence and suddenly two simple words carry far more weight than either could alone have, like ‘scalding coolness' (Hemingway 1940).  

Apparently, Hollywood and Bollywood can’t resist a good contradiction. Recall names like Silent Scream (1979 horror film), True Lies (1994 action comedy film),The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel song, 1965), Dharmendra-Rekha starrer 1984 Hindi film Jhootha Sach.

Giving you 100 examples will be too much for a Saturday morning, so I stopped at 50.

1. alone together
2. bittersweet
3. climb down
4. close distance
5. deceptively honest
6. devout atheist
7. dull roar
8. eloquent silence
9. extinct life
10. falsely true (Lord Tennyson 1862)
11. festive tranquility
12. genuine imitation
13. jumbo shrimp
14. historical present
15. humane slaughter
16. icy hot
17. idiot savant
18. ill/poor health
19. impossible solution
20. intense apathy
21. larger half
22. living dead
23. loosely sealed
24. loud whisper
25. loyal opposition
26. magic realism
27. militant pacifist
28. one-man band
29. open secret
30. overbearingly modest
31. passive-aggressive
32. paper towel
33. peaceful conquest
34. plastic glasses/silverware
35. properly ridiculous
36. random order
37. recorded live
38. resident alien
39. sad smile
40. same difference
41. shrewd dumbness
42. small crowd
43. soft rock
44. static flow
45. steel wool
46. theoretical experience
47. transparent night (Walt Whitman 1865)
48. true fiction
49. unbiased opinion
50. unconscious awareness

The business world has contributed its own treasure trove with:

• accurate estimate
• negative growth
• negative income
• friendly takeover
• working vacation
• upward fall, and many more.

How many of them do you, like ‘wise fools’, use without realising what they are? If after reading this, you begin spotting oxymorons everywhere, don’t blame me. It is a ‘perfectly terrible’ habit to acquire.

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