(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.
Tautology
Definition:
(n.) A repetition of the same meaning in different words; needless repetition of an idea in different words or phrases; a representation of anything as the cause, condition, or consequence of itself, as in the following lines: --//The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers,/And heavily in clouds brings on the day. Addison.
Example Sentences:
(1) Two studies are reported in which subjects rated the acceptability of different tautological constructions either alone (Experiment 1) or with supporting contextual information (Experiment 2).
(2) Barton rubs Old Firm up the wrong way Joey Barton apologises ‘unreservedly’ after being sent home by Rangers Read more The phrase “Joey Barton Twitter storm” is pretty much a tautology, so it was no surprise that his decision to sign for Rangers in May had social media in a kerfuffle when his 2012 tweet – “I am a Celtic fan” – was dredged up so that it might be subject to calm and sober scrutiny from all concerned.
(3) These 5 were classified into 2 operations of varying the independent variable, 2 of holding the independent variable constant, and tautology.
(4) If Farage was tempted to reply that his opponent trades in a cut-price political rhetoric that reduces debate to a bewildering brew of slogans, tautologies and clap-lines, he chose instead to occupy the argumentative high ground – or as close as Ukippers get to it.
(5) What do tautological phrases such as Boys will be boys, A promise is a promise, or War is war mean and how are they understood?
(6) None of the other freedoms are as free as they were meant to be, so how about we make this freedom a bit less of a freedom to make it more in line with the other non-freedoms.” Caught up in the tautology of his argument, the prime minister went on to make ever wilder and contradictory claims.
(7) However, this tautologic upper limit does not uniquely define the critical duration.
(8) Duration judgments were explaned predominantly by succession, whereas succession judgments were explained tautologically or by mere "seeing."
(9) This is what passes for significant thought in the GOP: new scare facts colliding with new anecdotes of meetin’ folks, all to explain re-synonymized tautologies.
(10) Our results indicate that glucoreceptor cells in tissues perfused by carotid arteries may play a tautological role in the sympathetic response to hypoglycemia and imply that glucose-sensitive receptors must also be located elsewhere in the central nervous system or in the periphery.
(11) They are nothing more, Stewart now acknowledges, than tautologies.
(12) Confining the diagnosis of schizophrenia to the severe cases indicates a conservative, perhaps tautological, approach to this diagnosis.
(13) To avoid tautology, the nature of these was confirmed by immunostaining for epithelial membrane antigen (EMA) and factor VIII-related antigen (FVII RAg).
(14) The first is a tautology lacking explanatory power.
(15) The reasoning may be questioned because of faulty inferential leaps, undue reliance on the concept of 'maturity', the use of a tautology, ('The dependent person is...dependent'), internal contradictions, and a questionable analogy between children's and adults' behaviour.
(16) The basic tenet of twin biology, that most twin excess anomalies are due to MZs, is a myth self-perpetuated by a methodological tautology, and is false, at least for mortality.
(17) It is argued that since Heather & Robertson's 'new' approach incorporates a set of assumptions parallel to those of the disease concept it is equally tautological, and therefore does not represent the type of change in paradigm they propose.
(18) Historian and MP Tristram Hunt is indicted for "tautology and other errors".
(19) It is this devotion to the infinitely unknown that makes Hugo so meticulous in giving the reader Valjean's prison numbers; and why Valjean's name is almost a tautology.
(20) Forensic factors were found to be positively related to length of admission; and motivation for treatment--a problematic concept which has frequently been regarded as tautologous--is also discussed.