One Seriously Funny List of Oxymorons

An oxymoron is a short phrase, usually two words, that is contrary or incongruous. A classic oxymoron can be found in the seafood section of your local grocery store: oxymorons.htm" class="bg-danger bg-opacity-25">jumbo shrimp. Sure, "jumbo" means something is big, but "shrimp"? It's more than just a tasty crustacean! It's also a slangy way of calling someone small or short. So "jumbo shrimp" is an oxymoron.

The term "oxymoron">oxymoron" comes from Greek, where "oxy" means "sharp or acute," and "moros" means "dumb or foolish." So oxymoron is itself a bit of, well, an oxymoron. It smashes together a root word meaning sharp and another root meaning dumb. That seems about right.

In any case, we've been using oxymorons for hundreds of years. The earliest known instance was in 1640, in oxymoron">Edward Reynolds' "A treatise of the passions and faculties of the soule of man":

Reynolds gives us a lot to work with there, including the Greek spelling of "oxymoron." The oxymoron that Reynolds gives us, though, is in Latin. It's Mortibus vivimus and it means "living death."

Sometimes oxymorons are used more for satire or sarcasm than for pure wordplay purposes. These are sometimes called "rhetorical oxymorons." Think of "military intelligence" or "airline food." They aren't technically opposites like our old favorite "jumbo shrimp," but anyone who's eaten food on an airplane will get the joke.

People will often say a particular two-word phrase is an oxymoron when there's no real contradiction between the two words, and it doesn't seem like they're making a joke. So here is a list of clear oxymorons ("clear oxymoron" being a kind of oxymoron itself, right?).