In my humble opinion, the word ‘irony’ is one of the most misunderstood words in the English language, not just by ESL students but also by native speakers of English. The words irony, ironical, ironic, ironicalness completely confuse native speakers and students alike. Even I’ve had a few problems writing this blog post! This is my 8th revision before I was ready to finally publish!
The Cambridge Online Dictionary provides the definition “a situation in which something which was intended to have a particular result has the opposite or a very different result”. However, the Oxford Online Dictionary goes a little further: “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect”, it also adds two more definitions: “a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result” and “(also dramatic or tragic irony) a literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character’s words or actions is clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character”.
Our American English speaking counterparts also define irony slightly differently too! The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines irony as the following:
(2)(a) – “the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning”.
(2)(b) – “a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony”.
(3)(a)(1) – “incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result”.
(3)(a)(2) – “an event or result marked by such incongruity”
It’s like rain on your wedding day
No it’s not. Not unless you arranged your wedding day in the driest area on earth for the specific purpose of avoiding rain. If you didn’t do that, it’s just bad luck. Sorry.
A traffic jam when you’re already late
Again, bad luck I’m afraid. In British English we have a great term for this and it’s called Sod’s Law which means what can go wrong, will go wrong!
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
Sorry, you’re smoking in the wrong place. Go and smoke some place else.
It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
I’m going to say that you probably should have bought a few more knives. Maybe if you were in a knife factory and now going to give a presentation to a prospective buyer of knives and need a knife for your presentation and you could only find spoons, that may well be ironic.
Granted, I haven’t gone through the entire song, but the other lyrics don’t fare much better.
So what are some examples of irony?
The titanic being labelled as the unsinkable ship and it skins on it’s maiden voyage.
A police officer responsible for issuing speeding tickets gets his driving license revoked for speeding.
A person who claims to be a vegetarian and not eat meat but actually eats a pepperoni pizza.