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What is "irony"

Crossword clues for irony

irony
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
irony
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
detect a note of sarcasm/irony/excitement etc
▪ Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice?
dramatic irony
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
bitter
▪ The bitter irony was that the whole plan had been her idea right from the start.
▪ His work is thus marked with a bitter irony which permeated not only the substance of his theory but also its method.
▪ And the bitterest irony of all was that he himself was a victim.
▪ It was a bitter irony that he condemned her for loving a man who was out of reach.
certain
▪ There is a certain irony about the events leading up to the 1954 Convention.
▪ There is a certain irony in the Democrats' harmonious return to Chicago this week.
▪ There was a certain look of irony in her expression, a mixture of shyness and sarcasm.
▪ There is a certain irony in all this.
cruel
▪ By a cruel irony, it was the sixth anniversary of their engagement.
▪ There was, indeed, a kind of cruel irony in the collapse of the irrigation companies.
▪ This is a particularly cruel irony because as the 1911 census revealed doctors had the smallest families of all categories of occupations.
dramatic
▪ The two basic forms of irony found in these tales are verbal irony and dramatic irony.
▪ There's dramatic irony for you.
▪ It was above all the smile of dramatic irony, of those who have privileged information.
▪ It is a textbook for the study of dramatic irony in all its forms.
great
▪ It is one of the great ironies that Bourbon is a dry county.
▪ That is the greatest irony of all.
heavy
▪ The intention is to curb the spread of package-tour baroque and heavy irony.
nice
▪ He was a redoubtable debater with a caustic tongue in polemics and a nice touch in irony in writing.
▪ There was a nice irony in steelworkers asking for the same interest rates.
tragic
▪ It was a Hardyesque situation, and one which added an element of tragic irony to my sorrow.
▪ In a tragic twist of irony, Goldberg was taken seriously.
▪ With a tragic irony she very nearly succeeded.
ultimate
▪ To lose her now would be the ultimate irony.
▪ And the ultimate irony about Saint-Mames is that that particular saint Saint-Mames is the patron saint of the stomach.
▪ Perhaps the ultimate irony is that Stalinist-style Socialist Realism is now being sold in the West.
▪ To me, it seemed the ultimate irony.
▪ But our instinctive need to fill the vacuum inspires us to the ultimate irony: We turn 12 average citizens into killers.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
heavy irony/sarcasm
▪ As the magazine with heavy sarcasm reported: Lady Betty adopted her new career with relish.
▪ The intention is to curb the spread of package-tour baroque and heavy irony.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Life is full of ironies, some hilarious, some tragic.
▪ The irony is that some of the poorest countries have the richest natural resources.
▪ The irony of the situation was obvious -- if I told the truth, nobody would believe me!
▪ The tragic irony is that the drug was supposed to save lives.
▪ Through irony and humor, James dilutes the seriousness of the novel.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And the bitterest irony of all was that he himself was a victim.
▪ Beneath the cynicism, beneath the irony, however, turmoil.
▪ It is worth stressing the irony of the applicant's position.
▪ Perhaps the author is being satirical, employing irony, allegory, or ambiguity.
▪ The irony continued throughout its pages.
▪ The irony of it is that he has the persistence to get somewhere.
▪ We thank Flaubert for picking it up; in a sense, the irony wasn't there until he observed it.
Related phrases:
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Irony

Irony \I"ron*y\, n. [L. ironia, Gr. ? dissimulation, fr. ? a dissembler in speech, fr. ? to speak; perh. akin to E. word: cf. F. ironie.]

  1. Dissimulation; ignorance feigned for the purpose of confounding or provoking an antagonist.

  2. A sort of humor, ridicule, or light sarcasm, which adopts a mode of speech the meaning of which is contrary to the literal sense of the words.

Irony

Irony \I"ron*y\, a. [From Iron.]

  1. Made or consisting of iron; partaking of iron; iron; as, irony chains; irony particles; -- In this sense iron is the more common term. [R.]
    --Woodward.

  2. Resembling iron in taste, hardness, or other physical property.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
irony

c.1500, from Latin ironia, from Greek eironeia "dissimulation, assumed ignorance," from eiron "dissembler," perhaps related to eirein "to speak" (see verb). Used in Greek of affected ignorance, especially that of Socrates. For nuances of usage, see humor. Figurative use for "condition opposite to what might be expected; contradictory circumstances" is from 1640s.

irony

"of or resembling iron," late 14c., from iron (n.) + -y (2).

Wiktionary
irony

Etymology 1 n. 1 A statement that, when taken in context, may actually mean something different from, or the opposite of, what is written literally; the use of words expressing something other than their literal intention, often in a humour. 2 dramatic irony: a theatrical effect in which the meaning of a situation, or some incongruity in the plot, is understood by the audience, but not by the characters in the play. 3 Ignorance feign for the purpose of confounding or provoke an antagonist; Socratic irony. 4 (context informal sometimes proscribed English){{cite news Etymology 2

a. Of or pertaining to the metal iron.

Related phrases:
WordNet
irony

  1. n. witty language used to convey insults or scorn; "he used sarcasm to upset his opponent"; "irony is wasted on the stupid"; "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own"--Johathan Swift [syn: sarcasm, satire, caustic remark]

  2. incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs; "the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated"

  3. a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Irony (album)

Irony (stylised as irony) is an album by ACO, released in 2003.

Irony (Wonder Girls song)

"Irony" is a song recorded by the South Korean girl group Wonder Girls, written and produced by Park Jin-young. It was released as their debut single and the lead single from their debut album The Wonder Years on February 13, 2007, through JYP Entertainment. It was also released as a maxi single and extended play (EP), titled The Wonder Begins. Three tracks, including "Bad Boy", "It's Not Love", and a remix version of "Irony", were on the EP. "Bad Boy" was released as the second single in March 2007 while "It's Not Love" was released as the third single on April 27, 2007. "Irony" became one of their biggest hits in South Korea. An accompanying music video was also released and shows Sohee, Yeeun, Sunmi and Hyuna's revenge on Sunye's unfaithful boyfriend by using a voodoo doll to embarrass him.

Irony (disambiguation)

Irony is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does.

Irony or Ironic may also refer to:

  • On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, an 1841 philosophical dissertation on irony by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
  • Irony mark, a proposed punctuation mark
  • Irony (framework), a framework for .NET language implementation
Irony

Irony , in its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears, on the surface, to be the case, differs radically from what is actually the case. Irony may be divided into categories such as verbal, dramatic, and situational.

Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes can emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth, denies the contrary of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection.

Other forms, as identified by historian Connop Thirlwall, include dialectic and practical irony.

Irony (framework)

Irony is a parser generator framework for language implementation on the .NET platform. Unlike most existing yacc/ lex-style solutions, it does not employ code generation of a scanner/ parser from grammars written in an external DSL. The grammars for the target language are coded directly in C# instead. The framework implements a LALR(1) parser.

Irony (ClariS song)

"Irony" is a pop song by the Japanese duo and idol unit ClariS, written by Kz. It was released as the unit's debut single on October 20, 2010 by SME Records. The song was used as the opening theme to the 2010 anime series Oreimo. A music video was produced for "Irony". The single peaked at No. 7 on Japan's weekly Oricon singles chart.

Usage examples of "irony".

What you call affectless irony is for me a fabulous adventure, a rush of sexual excitement: a frenzied yet precise exploration of the unimagined depths of cyberspace, and of the expanded dimensions of my skin.

As a student of military history, Mihajlovic found a fine irony in the fact that a medieval castle, a type of fortification long obsolete in an age of airmobile troops and nuclear weapons, could once again play a part in a modern military operation.

To his former pretexts for irony a fresh one was now added- allusions to stepmothers and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.

Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he did not smile with pleasure or affection for his son, but with quiet, gentle irony because he thought she was trying what she believed to be the last means of arousing him.

To have got to this point only to be blocked by some kind of glitch was the kind of irony that only a truly badass god would practice.

King John of France was proving such an ache In English prisons wide and fair and grand, Whose long expanses of green park and chace Did ape large liberty with such success As smiles of irony ape smiles of love.

Then the colors leaked away one by one, chroma weakening: purple-blue, manganese violet, discord, cobalt blue, doubt, affection, chrome green, chrome yellow, raw sienna, contemplation, alizarin crimson, irony, silver, severity, compassion, cadmium red, white.

Sir Willoughby glanced at Dehors with his customary benevolent irony in speaking of the persons, great in their way, who served him.

It was like a religious ceremony but full of ironies you don't find in most religions.

Anatole France, who must at least have been an intelligent man and who was fond of indulging in irony, having sat for the painter Van Dongen for his portrait, not only refused to accept the picture once it was finished but forbade it to be shown in public.

Elder Eddas, but here is the most ironic of ironies: many can hear the Eddas within themselves but few can understand.

In his phenomenological examination of the theme of love, in exploring the border zone between eroticism and licit sexuality, between irony and nostalgia, Kundera succeeds brilliantly in revealing the inadmissible: all the essentially comical elements concealed in human sexuality!

Tolkien terms eucatastrophe, is a happy example of the many ironies Saberhagen employs in his fiction.

The excerpt that follows is an interesting example of how the lack of ftf cues can make it difficult to tell whether someone is intending humor or irony, and when they are being honest or sly.

I will argue later in the book that much of what we call fetishism, and cross-dressing for that matter, is more an irony of our flawed culture than a sexual problem.