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It can be poetry when opposites attract

Oxymorons sound like idiots out of breath gasping for air, but they’re just phrases (like “falsely true” in this example, or “loving hate” in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) that combine two words of opposite meaning to good effect. ‘Oxymoron’ is derived from the Greek words oksus, meaning sharp or pointed, and moros, meaning dull or foolish. Of course, for an oxymoron to work, the combined expression has to make sense: there’s no

point saying “black white” and expecting people to roar in appreciation, unless you are referring to an African gentleman named Mr White, in which case it’s an oxymoron.

In fact, oxymorons are far more common than one might imagine. How often has someone, caught in a place where she shouldn’t be, been told to ‘act naturally’? How many seemingly knowledgeable people have confided in you an ‘open secret’? How often has a clerk demanded an ‘original copy’? Or, while negotiating a service, have you demanded an ‘exact estimate’?

These are all oxymorons, because if

you look at each word, one seems to contradict the other, and yet their meaning is perfectly clear to us all.

When I was assailed for my use of the expression “cattle class”, I was ‘clearly misunderstood’ – I had used the term, but it didn’t mean what my critics thought it did.

When roll-call was taken in a boarding school and a girl was ‘found missing’, that was an oxymoron as well as a major crisis for the school administration.

Boys’ boarding schools, of course, feature a lot of conversations about girls, and many of the superficial judgements passed involve oxymorons – ‘God, she’s pretty ugly’, ‘she’s awfully beautiful’, ‘that woman was barely dressed’, and the like. Girls, being less superficial, are likely to describe the boys they know with other oxymorons: ‘seriously funny’, for instance, or ‘terribly nice’.

By their very nature, oxymorons also lend themselves to low humour – when terms that are in fact not contradictory are placed together and described as oxymorons (even when they are not supposed to be), the joke is that you think the expression is a contradiction in terms. “American culture”, some Brits say, is an oxymoron. Some diplomats consider “United Nations” an oxymoron, since nations are rarely united; a few pseudo-intellectuals list “military intelligence” as an oxymoron, since they sneer that only the unintelligent go off to risk their lives for the country, or worse in another oxymoron (a “civil war” – for what could be more uncivil than warfare?). Of course, when they quit, many soldiers seek an “active retirement” – another oxymoron.our public seems to think “honest politician” is an oxymoron, as is “business ethics”; they also laugh at “educational television” as a misnomer. Many an anti-romantic would claim “Happily Married” is an oxymoron…

And ask frustrated computer users to nominate an oxymoron from their daily experience, and many will suggest “Microsoft Works”. Does it work for you?