Words are fascinating aren’t they? I especially love the way we group them together as figures of speech. They tend to make our language more expressive, to give it more oomph. But if you take a lot of these figures of speech literally they make no sense – such is the way with an oxymoron.
If you think about it, oxymorons are thrown around willy nilly on a daily basis and as much as they fly in the face of common sense, we’ve all recognised them as acceptable figures of speech – and that’s probably why I love them so much.
So bring on your oxymorons like: act naturally, pretty ugly, virtual reality, found missing, only choice, minor crisis, seriously funny, jumbo shrimp, original copies, living dead, working holiday, unbiased opinion, doing nothing and global village; because even though oxymorons are contradictory at heart, they make ‘awfully good’ sense!
Go on, admit it, you love them too!
