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Definition of Oxymoron
1. Noun. Conjoining contradictory terms (as in 'deafening silence').
Definition of Oxymoron
1. n. A figure in which an epithet of a contrary signification is added to a word; e. g., cruel kindness; laborious idleness.
Definition of Oxymoron
1. Noun. (rhetoric) A figure of speech in which two words with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect. ¹
2. Noun. (context: general) A contradiction in terms. ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Oxymoron
1. a combination of contradictory or incongruous words [n -MORONS or -MORA]
Lexicographical Neighbors of Oxymoron
Literary usage of Oxymoron
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Glossary of Terms and Phrases by Henry Percy Smith (1883)
"oxymoron. [Gr., pointedly foolish.] (A'/iet.) The application of paradoxical
epithets to the subject of a proposition, often involving a kind of ..."
2. Higher Latin Prose by Henry William Auden (1898)
"oxymoron. oxymoron may be regarded as an extreme development of ... Closely allied
to oxymoron is Litotes, properly the negativing of an opposite, ..."
3. A Handbook of English Composition by James Morgan Hart (1895)
"Antithesis; oxymoron.—Antithesis can scarcely be called a figure. It changes
nothing in the nature ... MACAULAY : Comic Dramatists. (See \ 92.) 1 oxymoron ..."
4. Childe Harold by George Gordon Byron Byron, Henry Fanshawe Tozer (1885)
"oxymoron, or juxtaposition of apparently contradictory notions. This figure is
employed, sometimes for purposes of irony, sometimes to produce pleasing ..."
5. Rhetoric: Or, A View of Its Principal Tropes and Figures with a Variety of by Thomas Gibbons (1767)
"oxymoron defined. § 2. Examples of it in common, ... POPE, YOUNG, and HORACE.
§ 4. In- fiances from Scripture. § 5. Remarks and cautions as to the oxymoron ..."
6. Much Bigger Than Grownups: Chronicles of a Native South Africanby Shelley Wood Gauld by Shelley Wood Gauld (2006)
"The term "Christian war" is, in essence, an oxymoron; the two words are inherently
contradictory. The Roman military was particularly anti-Christian and in ..."
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