Editing Oxymoron (section)

==Types and examples==
Oxymorons in the narrow sense are a rhetorical device used deliberately by the speaker and intended to be understood as such by the listener. In a more extended sense, the term "oxymoron" has also been applied to inadvertent or incidental contradictions, as in the case of "[[dead metaphor]]s" ("barely clothed" or "terribly good"). Lederer (1990), in the spirit of "recreational linguistics", goes as far as to construct "logological oxymorons" such as reading the word ''nook'' composed of "no" and "ok" or the surname ''Noyes'' as composed of "no" plus "yes", or refers to some oxymoronic candidates as puns through the conversion of nouns into verbs,  as in "divorce court", or "press release". He refers to potential oxymora such as "war games", "peacekeeping missile", "United Nations", and "airline food" as opinion-based, because some may disagree that they contain an internal contradiction.<ref name="Lederer">[[Richard Lederer]], "Oxymoronology" in  ''[[Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics]]'' (1990), online version: [http://www.fun-with-words.com/oxym_oxymoronology.html fun-with-words.com].</ref>

There are a number of single-word oxymorons built from "dependent morphemes"<ref name="Lederer" /> (i.e. no longer a productive [[English compound|compound]] in English, but loaned as a compound from a different language), as with ''[[wikt:preposterous|pre-posterous]]'' (lit. "with the hinder part before", compare ''[[hysteron proteron]]'', "[[:wikt: upside-down|upside-down]]", "[[:wikt:head over heels|head over heels]]", "[[wikt:ass-backwards|ass-backwards]]" etc.)<ref>"closely related to hysteron proteron, it shouldn't be ''ass backward'', which is the proper arrangement of one's anatomy, to describe things all turned around. For that state of disarray the expression should be ''ass frontward''."
[[Richard Lederer]], ''Amazing Words'' (2012), [https://books.google.com/books?id=tnxQCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT107 p. 107].</ref> or ''[[sophomore|sopho-more]]'' (an artificial Greek compound, lit. "wise-foolish").

The most common form of oxymoron involves an [[adjective]]–[[noun]] combination of two words, but they can also be devised in the [[semantics|meaning]] of sentences or phrases. One classic example of the use of oxymorons in English literature can be found in this example from [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'', where [[Romeo]] strings together thirteen in a row:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Shakespeare |first1=William |author-link1=William Shakespeare |title=[[Romeo and Juliet]] |chapter=Act 1, Scene 1}}</ref>
{{poemquote|1=O brawling love! O loving hate!
  O anything 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.}}

Other examples from English-language literature include: "hateful good" ([[Chaucer]], translating ''odibile bonum'')<ref>"Poverte is hate[fu]l good", glossed  ''Secundus philosophus: paupertas odibile bonum''; the saying is recorded by [[Vincent of Beauvais]] as attributed to [[Secundus the Silent]] (also referenced in [[Piers Plowman]]). 
[[Walter William Skeat]] (ed.), ''Notes on the Canterbury Tales'' (''Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer'' vol. 5, 1894), [https://books.google.com/books?id=3efWXPDaIiUC&pg=PA321 p. 321].</ref> "proud humility" ([[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]]),<ref>''[[Epithalamion]]'' (1595), of feminine virtue, echoed by Milton as "modest pride". Joshua Scodel, ''Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature'' (2009), [https://books.google.com/books?id=5UsxJfvHN3oC&pg=PA267&lpg=PA267 p. 267].</ref> "darkness visible" ([[John Milton|Milton]]), "beggarly riches" ([[John Donne]]),<ref>''[[Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions]]'', (1624)</ref> "[[wikt:damn with faint praise|damn with faint praise]]" ([[Alexander Pope|Pope]]),<ref>''[[Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot]]'' (1734)</ref> "expressive silence" ([[James Thomson (poet, born 1700)|Thomson]], echoing [[Cicero]]'s {{langx|la|cum tacent clamant|lit=when they are silent, they cry out}}), 
"melancholy merriment" ([[Byron]]), "faith unfaithful", "falsely true" ([[Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson|Tennyson]]),<ref>''[[Idylls of the King]]'': "And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."</ref> "conventionally unconventional", "tortuous spontaneity" ([[Henry James]])<ref>''[[The Lesson of the Master]]'' (1888)</ref> "delighted sorrow", "loyal treachery", and "scalding coolness" ([[Hemingway]]).<ref>Geneviève Hily-Mane
, ''Le style de Ernest Hemingway: la plume et le masque'' (1983), [https://books.google.com/books?id=N-1MbsaoWvwC&pg=PA169 p. 169].</ref>

In literary contexts, the author does not usually signal the use of an oxymoron, but in rhetorical usage, it has become common practice to advertise the use of an oxymoron explicitly to clarify the argument, as in:
:"Voltaire [...] we might call, by an oxymoron which has plenty of truth in it, an 'Epicurean pessimist.'" (''[[Quarterly Review]]'' vol. 170 (1890), p. 289)
In this example, "Epicurean pessimist" would be recognized as an oxymoron in any case, as the core tenet of [[Epicureanism]] is [[Ataraxia|equanimity]] (which would preclude any sort of [[pessimism|pessimist outlook]]). However, the explicit advertisement of the use of oxymorons opened up a sliding scale of less than obvious construction, ending in the "[[#opinion oxymoron|opinion oxymoron]]s" such as "[[business ethics]]".

[[J. R. R. Tolkien]] interpreted his own surname as derived from the [[Low German]] equivalent of ''dull-keen'' (High German ''{{lang|de|[[wikt:tollkühn|toll-kühn]]}}'') which would be a literal equivalent of Greek ''oxy-moron''.<ref>see e.g. Adam Roberts, ^''The Riddles of The Hobbit'' (2013), p. 164f; J. R. Holmes in ''[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]]'' (2007),  [https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA53 p. 53]. It has been suggested that the actual etymology of the Tolkien surname is more likely from the village of Tolkynen in [[Kętrzyn|Rastenburg]], [[East Prussia]]. M. Mechow, ''Deutsche Familiennamen preussischer Herkunft'' (1994), p. 99.</ref>