(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.
Paradox
Definition:
(n.) A tenet or proposition contrary to received opinion; an assertion or sentiment seemingly contradictory, or opposed to common sense; that which in appearance or terms is absurd, but yet may be true in fact.
Example Sentences:
(1) Paradoxically, each tax holiday increases the need for the next, because companies start holding ever greater amounts of their tax offshore in the expectation that the next Republican government will announce a new one.
(2) This "paradox of redistribution" was certainly observable in Britain, where Welfare retained its status as one of the 20th century's most exalted creations, even while those claiming benefits were treated with ever greater contempt.
(3) Although selenium deficiency in livestock is consequently now rare in Oregon, selenium-deficient soils and attendant selenium deficiency conditions have been reported near the Kesterson Wildlife Refuge in the Northern part of the San Joaquin Valley, California, where, paradoxically, selenium toxicity in wildfowl, nesting near evaporation ponds, occurred and attracted wide attention.
(4) Our findings may hold the key to understanding the apparent paradox that although neuroleptics presumably induce their therapeutic actions in disorders such as Tourette syndrome and schizophrenia as well as their parkinsonian effects by blocking dopamine receptors, this antagonism occurs immediately while behavioral changes often require weeks for maximal development.
(5) Urinary output paradoxically increased during the first day following starvation, but fell dramatically thereafter.
(6) Transient "paradoxical" increase of ST segment elevation followed by rapid falling was observed in 4 patients.
(7) The duration of paradoxical sleep was particularly increased resembling the effects of benzodiazepines.
(8) Comparing measurements of base line and 30 and 60% of Pmmax indicated that the degree of asynchrony, paradox, and variation in compartmental contribution were significantly related to the level of the load; significant abnormalities were observed at even 30% of Pmmax, a target pressure that can be sustained indefinitely.
(9) Nitroprusside, which is the drug of choice for treating this "paradoxical hypertension," was not readily available.
(10) We have attempted to investigate a relationship between the paradoxical GH secretion with the abnormal glucose tolerance test present in some cases of acromegaly.
(11) Allen Mathies, president and chief executive officer at Huntington Memorial Hospital, cited a paradoxical side effect stemming from the success of his hospital's geriatric outreach programs.
(12) Paradoxical bronchoconstriction was not observed when salbutamol was diluted with water.
(13) Similar paradoxes bedevilled all the other chief themes.
(14) But like so many of his colleagues in the Trump administration , Spicer has shown us how unconsciousness and stupidity can, however paradoxically, assume a Machiavellian function – how a flagrant example of gross insensitivity and flat-out odiousness can serve as yet another useful and convenient distraction.
(15) In addition, despite this overall protective effect, zinc paradoxically increased the glutamate-induced destruction of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate diaphorase (NADPH-d)-containing neurons, a subpopulation that was shown in the preceding paper (Koh and Choi, 1988) to exhibit resistance to NMDA receptor-mediated neurotoxicity, and vulnerability to non-NMDA receptor-mediated neurotoxicity.
(16) Photograph: YouTube Formation is a protest and celebration, concerned with and in love with the very particular paradox of the black American identity and experience.
(17) Paradoxical embolus to the right coronary artery was demonstrated premorbidly and at autopsy.
(18) A sample of physician-referred chronic insomniacs was randomly allocated to either progressive relaxation, stimulus control, paradoxical intention, placebo or no treatment conditions.
(19) There was no difference between paradox and normal hearts in calcium stimulated ATPase activity in the SR.
(20) The apparent paradox in these results is correlated with different effects of the two maneuvers on left atrial pressure.