Oxymoron – Examples and Definition of Oxymoron

What is an oxymoron?

An oxymoron is a word or group of words that is self-contradicting, as in bittersweet or plastic glass. Oxymorons are often used in literature. One famous example abounding with oxymorons is the following speech by Romeo from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

O any thing, 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!

This love feel I, that feel no love in this.

Oxymorons are similar to but distinct from the devices of paradox and antithesis. While an oxymoron is a self-contradicting word or group of words, a paradox is a statement or argument that seems to be contradictory or to go against common sense, but that is yet perhaps still true—for example, “less is more.” Antithesis, meanwhile, refers to the contrast of ideas through the use of parallel language, as in the phrase “action, not words,” and in President Kennedy’s famous injunction: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

Did You Know?

The Greeks exhaustively classified the elements of rhetoric, or effective speech and writing, and gave the name oxymoron, literally “pointed foolishness,” to the deliberate juxtaposing of seemingly contradictory words. The roots of oxymoron – oxys, meaning “sharp” or “keen,” and moros, meaning “foolish” – are nearly antonyms themselves, making oxymoron nicely self-descriptive. Oxymoron originally applied to a meaningful paradox condensed into a couple of words, as in “precious bane,” “lonely crowd,” or “sweet sorrow.” Today, however, oxymoron can also refer to unintentional contradictions, like “a plastic glass.”