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Oxymoron
(redirected from oxymoronically)

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oxymoron
Rhetoric an epigrammatic effect, by which contradictory terms are used in conjunction

Oxymoron 

a stylistic device combining contradictory words to form a new semantic entity, for example, “sorrowful joy” (S. A. Esenin). The oxymoron makes literary language more meaningful and intensifies its emotional impact by disclosing the unity of opposites and of life’s seeming contradictions [examples of oxymoron in italics]:

See how she’s rejoiced in sorrow,

So elegantly bared.

A. AKHMATOVA

We love everything—the ardor of cold numbers,

And the gift of divine visions.

A. BLOK

The oxymoron can be a type of literary paradox.



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Saying that humanity is made for a more uncivilized life, in tune with nature, he offers a possible new way for people to live their lives, one that manages to be oxymoronically traditional and untraditional at the same time.
Otherwise, I missed the chance to sup on sea bass with someone called Stavros Niarchos, whom the New York Post oxymoronically described the next day as being "of Paris Hilton and Olsen twin fame".
To this effect Good Morning, Night casts against the indifferent, lifeless--and, for the most part, eerily unreal--'official History' of historians the full-bodied reality of what could be called, somewhat oxymoronically, the experiential history of individual lives.
 
 
 
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