Oxymoron examples: what an oxymoron is, with 100 examples

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that puts two words with opposite meanings side by side, as in “hot ice,” “bittersweet” or “open secret.” The contradiction is the point. The pair names a mixed state that neither word could name alone. Most oxymorons are an adjective and a noun, though a whole phrase or a single word can be one too.

Context is what turns the clash into a figure rather than a slip. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Duke Theseus reads a playbill promising “a tedious brief scene” of “very tragical mirth” and answers, “That is, hot ice.” Ice can't be hot, and he knows it. He coins an impossible pair on purpose, to show how absurd the playbill's pairs are. Everyday phrases like “jumbo shrimp” get called oxymorons too, though nobody chose the clash, and it often comes from a second meaning of one word.

The term is its own example. It comes from Greek oxys, “sharp,” and mōros, “foolish,” the root of “moron,” so an oxymoron is, literally, something pointedly foolish. If you need examples for an essay, take them from the literature section: those are deliberate, while many everyday and one-word cases only look contradictory.

Oxymoron examples at a glance

Everyday oxymoron examples

Many oxymorons have been said so often that the contradiction has worn smooth. In some the clash is real: “alone together,” “living dead.” In others it depends on a second sense of one word, as in “pretty ugly” or “jumbo shrimp,” and dissolves once you notice it. Everyday speech calls both kinds oxymorons.

1. Accidentally on purpose. Done deliberately, made to look like an accident.
2. Act naturally. Behave as if no one is watching, while someone is.
3. Almost exactly. Precision with an escape hatch.
4. Alone together. Two people in one room, each in a separate world.
5. Awfully good. “Awful” meant “inspiring awe” around 1300, which explains how it can praise.
6. Clearly confused. Certain of one thing only: that you don't understand.
7. Conspicuous absence. Someone noticed precisely because they aren't there.
8. Constant change. The one thing that never varies is that everything does.
9. Controlled chaos. Disorder someone is quietly steering, like a restaurant kitchen at eight o'clock.
10. Crash landing. The plane landed, just not the way anyone planned.
11. Cruel kindness. Help that hurts, or harm meant as help.
12. Deafening silence. A silence so loaded it seems loud. Also the most worn oxymoron in fiction.
13. Definite maybe. A noncommittal answer dressed up as a commitment.
14. Dry ice. Frozen carbon dioxide, which turns straight to gas without ever getting wet.
15. Eloquent silence. Saying nothing, and making the point anyway.
16. Exact estimate. A guess presented with more confidence than it has earned.
17. Friendly fire. Fire from your own side, which is not friendly at all.
18. Genuine imitation. Authentically fake, as in “genuine imitation leather.”
19. Ill health. Health in name only.
20. Jumbo shrimp. “Jumbo” means huge and “shrimp” is slang for anything small. The adjective comes from Jumbo, the giant elephant P. T. Barnum bought from London Zoo in 1882.
21. Larger half. Halves are equal by definition. This one isn't.
22. Light heavyweight. A boxing weight class: heavy for a light fighter, light for a heavy one.
23. Liquid gas. Gas squeezed until it turns liquid, like the propane in a camping stove.
24. Living dead. The undead of horror films, alive and dead at once.
25. Make haste slowly. The Latin festina lente. The historian Suetonius says the emperor Augustus often quoted it in its Greek form.
26. Minor crisis. An emergency, but a small one.
27. Negative growth. A shrinking economy described in the language of expansion.
28. Old news. News is supposed to be new. This has been around a while.
29. Only choice. A choice needs at least two options.
30. Open secret. Something everyone knows and nobody says.
31. Organized mess. A desk whose owner can find anything on it, and nobody else can.
32. Original copy. The first copy made, or a copy good enough to pass for the original.
33. Paid volunteer. Someone who signed up freely and still gets a stipend.
34. Pretty ugly. “Pretty,” meaning “fairly,” right beside the word it usually opposes.
35. Random order. Order is the opposite of random, except on a shuffled playlist.
36. Recorded live. Live once, then stored for later.
37. Sad smile. A smile that admits something hurts.
38. Same difference. No difference at all.
39. Seriously funny. Funny enough to be taken seriously.
40. Silent scream. All the effort of a scream and none of the sound.
41. Small crowd. A crowd, but a thin one.
42. Tough love. Kindness delivered as strictness.
43. Virtual reality. Real enough to feel, not real enough to touch.
44. Working vacation. A vacation that has quietly turned back into work.

Oxymorons in literature and poetry

Writers have used oxymorons for centuries to put a conflict inside a character into the fewest possible words. Shakespeare was especially fond of them. All the passages below are in the public domain.

The oxymorons from these passages, plus Juliet's “sweet sorrow” from the balcony scene, listed for reference:

45. Brawling love (Romeo and Juliet)
46. Loving hate (Romeo and Juliet)
47. Heavy lightness (Romeo and Juliet)
48. Serious vanity (Romeo and Juliet)
49. Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms (Romeo and Juliet)
50. Feather of lead (Romeo and Juliet)
51. Bright smoke (Romeo and Juliet)
52. Cold fire (Romeo and Juliet)
53. Sick health (Romeo and Juliet)
54. Still-waking sleep (Romeo and Juliet)
55. Beautiful tyrant (Romeo and Juliet)
56. Fiend angelical (Romeo and Juliet)
57. Dove-feathered raven (Romeo and Juliet)
58. Wolvish-ravening lamb (Romeo and Juliet)
59. Damned saint (Romeo and Juliet)
60. Honourable villain (Romeo and Juliet)
61. Sweet sorrow, Juliet's word for parting (Romeo and Juliet)
62. Tragical mirth (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
63. Tedious brief (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
64. Hot ice (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
65. Wondrous strange snow (A Midsummer Night's Dream), a doubtful case: some editors think “strange” replaced a word, such as “black,” that would clash with snow
66. Darkness visible (Paradise Lost)
67. Faith unfaithful (Idylls of the King)
68. Falsely true (Idylls of the King)
69. Witty fool (Twelfth Night)
70. Foolish wit (Twelfth Night)

Oxymorons that are one word

Some contradictions fused into a single word. In these two you still hear both halves:

71. Bittersweet. Pleasure with an edge of loss, like the last evening of a holiday.
72. Frenemy. Friend plus enemy: a rival who keeps the friendship going.

The next three are oxymorons only by etymology. They make good trivia, but few readers hear a contradiction in them, so they are weak examples to cite in an essay.

73. Oxymoron. “Sharp” and “foolish” in Greek.
74. Pianoforte. The piano's full name, from the Italian for “soft and loud,” because touch alone controlled the volume.
75. Preposterous. From Latin praeposterus, literally “before-behind”: the back put in front.

You will often read that “sophomore” means “wise fool,” from Greek sophos and mōros. It is a good joke about second-year students, but etymologists treat it as folk etymology. The word grew out of “sophumer,” an older name for a second-year student, related to “sophist,” though the “wise fool” idea probably shaped its modern spelling.

Oxymorons in titles

A title has a second or two to stop someone. A pair of words that shouldn't go together does that, which is why so many books, films and songs use one. Golding's Darkness Visible, borrowed from Milton above, is one. Here are seven more.

76. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a novel by Milan Kundera (1984)
77. Little Big Man, a novel by Thomas Berger (1964), later a film
78. Night of the Living Dead, a horror film (1968)
79. The Sound of Silence, a song by Simon & Garfunkel (1964)
80. True Lies, an action film (1994)
81. Eyes Wide Shut, a film by Stanley Kubrick (1999)
82. Alone Together, a book about technology and loneliness by Sherry Turkle (2011)

Funny and ironic oxymorons

A whole family of oxymorons are jokes. They aren't contradictions in the dictionary sense. The speaker is suggesting that one half of the phrase isn't true. Most of them land on someone (a manufacturer, an employer, whoever booked the meeting), so check who before you use one.

83. Easy assembly. As promised on every flat-pack box.
84. Instant classic. A classic is something that has lasted. This one is a week old.
85. Minor surgery. As the joke goes, surgery is minor only when it happens to someone else.
86. Mandatory fun. The team-building afternoon nobody chose.
87. Required elective. A free choice, as long as you choose one.
88. Business casual. A dress code that tells you to relax, within limits.
89. Quick meeting. Usually not.
90. Planned spontaneity. The surprise party everyone knew about.
91. Good grief. An exclamation that pairs two opposites and means neither.
92. Fun run. Ten kilometers that someone insists were fun.

Oxymoron vs paradox and antithesis

These devices all set opposites against each other, and dictionaries sometimes use one to define another. The useful difference is scale: an oxymoron is a phrase, a paradox is a statement, and an antithesis is a balanced pair of clauses.

An oxymoron is often a paradox in miniature: “cold fire” sounds impossible, and in Romeo's mouth it is a true description of how he feels. A contradiction, by contrast, simply can't be true, and it is usually a mistake rather than a device. People also say “oxymoron” loosely for anything that seems a contradiction in terms, like “a vegetarian butcher.” That usage is widespread, and fine in conversation. In an essay on literature, keep the term for the device. For the broader family, see juxtaposition and the rhetorical devices list. For figures that compare rather than oppose, see analogy vs metaphor.

Why writers use oxymorons

• To name a mixed feeling. Grief that is also relief, love that feels like fear. Juliet doesn't say “I feel two ways about this.” She says “beautiful tyrant.”
• To characterize the speaker. A character who reaches for oxymorons is wrestling with something, or showing off. Romeo's first speech does both.
• To make a phrase stick. Contradictions snag the attention, which is why oxymorons turn up in titles, slogans and headlines.
• To be funny. “Mandatory fun” does in two words what a paragraph of complaint about team-building would do worse.

How to write a fresh oxymoron

The stock oxymorons (“deafening silence,” “controlled chaos,” “sweet sorrow”) were fresh once. Now readers tend to skim past them, and two or three on one page can read like borrowed clothes. A fresh one comes from looking hard at the thing you are describing.

1. Find a real contradiction in the scene

   Start with something that genuinely pulls two ways: a funeral where people laugh, a promotion that feels like exile, a kitchen that is calm in the middle of the dinner rush. If nothing is contradictory, an oxymoron will only be decoration.

2. Name each side as precisely as you can

   “Good” and “bad” make weak halves. A specific noun and a specific adjective make strong ones: not “nice anger” but “polite fury.”

3. Check that both halves are literally true

   The best oxymorons are accurate. A grudge held by someone who keeps giving gifts really is a generous grudge. If one half is only there for the sound, the phrase turns into a riddle.

4. Use one and let it land

   Put it where the reader will feel it, often at the end of a sentence, and don't follow it with a second. One oxymoron is a discovery. Three in a paragraph is a style, usually a tiring one, and close to purple prose, unless the pile-up is the point, as it is in Romeo's speech.

Eight original oxymorons, written for this guide, to show the method:

• A generous grudge
• A tidy disaster
• Polite fury
• Obedient rebellion
• Comfortable dread
• A crowded loneliness
• A proud apology
• Careful recklessness

To check a finished chapter for the worn ones, ask the Strokes Assistant to list every stock oxymoron it finds, with the sentence each one sits in, then decide which have earned their place.

Practice: oxymoron or not?

Decide what each line is before you look at the answers.

1. “a little giant”
2. “I must be cruel, only to be kind” (Hamlet)
3. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”
4. “a cold, cold night”
5. “less is more”
6. “freezing fire”
7. “a free gift”
8. “wise fool”

Answers. 1, 6 and 8 are oxymorons. 2 and 5 are paradoxes: whole statements that seem self-contradictory and turn out to be true. 3 is antithesis. 4 is repetition, not contradiction (see repetition examples). 7 is the opposite problem: a redundancy, since every gift is free.