What's the difference between antithesis and oxymoron?

Antithesis


Definition:

  • (n.) An opposition or contrast of words or sentiments occurring in the same sentence; as, "The prodigal robs his heir; the miser robs himself." "He had covertly shot at Cromwell; he how openly aimed at the Queen."
  • (n.) The second of two clauses forming an antithesis.
  • (n.) Opposition; contrast.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) If he’s being charged with publishing false information that seems to be the antithesis of his practice.” Bahgat writes a daily press review for Mada Masr as well as investigative pieces.
  • (2) The phychological aspects of language show an antithesis between learned and profane languages.
  • (3) "I got interested in writing about police corruption , it was a different angle, a police version of Bodies: very grown-up, it had mature themes, an antithesis of the escapist cop show.
  • (4) Mrs Tsvangirai was widely respected in Zimbabwe as the antithesis of President Robert Mugabe's extravagant and free-spending wife, Grace, who showed little concern for the plight of the many hungry and poor in her country.
  • (5) Ford, to them, is the antithesis of all that liberal namby-pambyness: he's the ordinary working man (albeit one who buys crack) and a good family guy (albeit one who has been repeatedly accused of sexual harassment and who, when asked if he ever told a colleague he wanted to "eat her pussy" he replied that he has "plenty enough to eat at home").
  • (6) "It is the very antithesis of big data, where you collect every bit of information that you can get hold of and send the lot to a processing centre, which gets clogged up in the process.
  • (7) In several of these neutrophil abnormalities, ie, neutrophil actin dysfunction, Chédiak-Higashi syndrome, and its "antithesis" described by Gallin and co-workers, the cellular dysfunctions were well documented but the molecular basis was completely obscure prior to cell biologic analysis.
  • (8) No: the clear winner in this elite-loathing, privilege-hating, populism-riven island is surely the quiet billionaire: Jonathan Harold Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere , who emerges ever more obviously as the very antithesis of Lord C. He runs a successful, increasingly diversified business empire.
  • (9) The investment arm of UK-based Aviva, which manages assets worth $522bn, is the latest international financier to flag concerns over the Carmichael coalmine , which it said could become a “stranded asset” and was “the antithesis of what was needed” ahead of key UN climate talks in Paris in December.
  • (10) With the Somali women who were the antithesis of the stereotyped, subjugated Muslim female – strong, proud, fighters to the end.
  • (11) Juventus were rocked when Antonio Conte quit last summer, and further stunned when he was replaced by Allegri, who was fired by Milan months earlier and appeared to be the antithesis of the beloved former coach.
  • (12) A new nuclear arms race, new states possessing nuclear weapons, and a breakdown of the nonproliferation regime are the antithesis of those goals.
  • (13) They are the antithesis of the right therapeutics of obesities.
  • (14) Experiments leading to these conclusions were discussed, the heterogeneity of accessory immune cells is shown, and as an antithesis the possibility emerges that processing is not conditio sine qua non.
  • (15) And now it’s become the phenomenon that it is.” McKerrow said the show was the “antithesis” of all the norms of a competitive reality TV show.
  • (16) But they are also the antithesis of conventional political organisation.
  • (17) The "cot-death syndrome" model is a definition of a non-reality and the antithesis of a scientific model.
  • (18) Issa's look is the antithesis of fashion eccentrics such as Anna Dello Russo, and has real-life appeal.
  • (19) I interviewed G-Unit once (minus the banged-up Tony Yayo) and they were the antithesis of the sullen, aggressive rapper stereotype (although they did turn their noses up at the very idea of letting any of the "British food" at their 5-star hotel pass their lips, and sent their manager out for a McDonalds instead).
  • (20) The sentencing judge told him that he had indulged in “the antithesis of democracy”.

Oxymoron


Definition:

  • (n.) A figure in which an epithet of a contrary signification is added to a word; e. g., cruel kindness; laborious idleness.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) My father, Peter Self, who was, oxymoronically, a “political scientist”, wrote numerous books, which, while often technical in character, were nonetheless informed by his own rather gentle and utopian socialism.
  • (2) A cinema hall in August … less the start of a sentence than an oxymoron, I know.
  • (3) Airport expansion would be a non-starter, as would any more money on carbon capture and storage, and the oxymoronic idea of "clean coal".
  • (4) If Scottish self-esteem, a phrase that makes one psychoanalyst I know reach for the term "oxymoron", is reflected in our statistics for liver disease, drug-addiction, obesity, young male suicide and domestic abuse, we're not in great shape.
  • (5) So for me, Muslim feminist, Christian feminist, Jewish feminist, it's all oxymoronic.
  • (6) The headline “ Rivalry is now part of higher education’s DNA ” (5 August) is an oxymoron.
  • (7) To most people, the phrase "recreational maths" is an oxymoron.
  • (8) For a start, it suggests trust is not so much a trump card in Eastleigh as an irrelevance: unfairly, the very idea of a trustworthy MP is fast becoming an oxymoron.
  • (9) In February 2015 the Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, called Oliver an “oxymoron” because he was an “English comedian”, after Oliver accused of him being thin-skinned.
  • (10) It seems oxymoronic to prescribe yet more war as the solution.
  • (11) That's what the UK's Foresight report argued a few months ago, calling for the oxymoronic "sustainable intensification".
  • (12) That such an oxymoron can exist is a credit to the legal gymnastics achieved by the Department of Justice, which is effectively allowing federal drug laws to be routinely flouted without consequence, so long as the law-breaking is done within a state-regulated and licensed system.
  • (13) While the term feels like an oxymoron, it’s used more often within the energy industry to refer to an expensive technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS) that once promised to keep coal power a dominant source of electricity for decades to come.
  • (14) But when I posted a blog inviting readers to suggest questions for you, someone [Newtownian1] said I should put it to you that green growth is an oxymoron.
  • (15) But by creating the ultimate oxymoron of diet food – something you eat to lose weight – it squared a seemingly impossible circle.
  • (16) If Maria Miller, the culture secretary, has sat in as many conferences on the "future of news" as I have recently (and I hope for her sake she hasn't), then she might have hesitated before defining what kind of "press" would be affected by the oxymoronic draft royal charter on self-regulation of the press .
  • (17) The manifesto message for councils is not promising; a “national framework” for devolution is oxymoronic, while the social care plans show little or no awareness of council function or finance.
  • (18) Everyone knows it’s wrong, but nobody does anything about it – just as they know that British complicity in torture and rendition from 2001 onwards was also wrong, but will again be endorsed by a boneless establishment, which believes that institutional law-breaking is an oxymoron.
  • (19) Just pablum about “shareholder capitalism” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) and “enlightened corporations” that are oh-so-kind enough to give working-class Americans jobs.
  • (20) But the language of paradox, oxymoron and subtle contradiction – the language of children – does better.