Originally posted by Crash_OverloadSorry Crash, that's not irony either...
[b] NO offence or anything, but none of that is irony! Irony IS "A guy out of insulin, but on his way to the pharmacist, he gets hit by an insulin delivery truck" THAT is irony, "drunk_nazgul" but never drank IS NOT Irony. Sorry, just wanted A say. [/B]
Originally posted by Crash_Overload
NO offence or anything, but none of that is irony! Irony IS "A guy out of insulin, but on his way to the pharmacist, he gets hit by an insulin delivery truck" THAT is irony, "drunk_nazgul" but never drank IS NOT Irony. Sorry, just wanted A say.
Originally posted by diegocala
Sorry Crash, that's not irony either...
According to my dictionary:
Irony:
1)is a subtle form of humour which involves saying things that you do not mean.
2) if you talk about the Irony of a situation, you mean that it is odd or amusing because it involves a contrast.
Originally posted by KesSorry Kes, but it is just funny bad luck, and if your dictionary is right then the Irony would be that everything in all the posts above would be ironic 😛
Originally posted by Crash_Overload
[B]NO offence or anything, but none of that is irony! Irony IS "A guy out of insulin, but on his way to the pharmacist, he gets hit by an insulin delivery truck" THAT is irony, "drunk_nazgul" but never drank IS NOT Irony. Sorry, just wanted A say.According to my dictionary:
Irony:
1)is a subtle form of humour which involves saying things that you do not mean.
2) if you talk about the Irony of a situation, you mean that it is odd or amusing because it involves a contrast. [/B]
Crash is right, those examples are not irony. Contradiction is not irony.
Alanis was also incorrect- but oddly enough, in a way that works. Because the fact that her song was called 'Irony' and entirely failed to contain a single piece of irony is a little bit ironic!
As Greg Proops says, rain on your wedding day is not ironic, it's a bummer. It is only ironic if you were a weatherman who predicted good weather, and even then it wouldn't be THAT ironic.
Alanis herself happily admits her error, though, and points out she is a singer, not a grammatacist, and if that is the worst thing you can find about her music she is pretty happy.
Despite the fact that irony does ALSO mean 'like iron'- though no-one uses it that way- our pals at Oxford- pretty much th centre of the English language- describe it thusly:
n. Expression of one's meaning by language of opposite or different tendency, esp. simulated adoption of another's point of view for purpose of ridicule; ill-timed or perverse arrival of event or circumstance in itself desirable, due to the feigned good will and actual malice of (Fate, circumstance etc.); use of language that has an inner meaning for a privileged audience and an outer meaning for the persons addressed or concerned (sometime sincluding the speaker)
That last bit is what is happening if you say that someone is speaking with deep irony (e.g German Jew who runs a bank saying how good Hitler's War is for the economy- delivered straight that would be inanity, delivered ironically it is cynical wit- but it only works for those who know all the facts). So that is distinctive from a situation being ironic, which is what people here are trying to describe. The mistake people are making is that because irony normally involves contradiction, therefore contradiction is irony. This is a common problem with grammar...
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Crash is right, those examples are not irony. Contradiction is not irony.Alanis was also incorrect- but oddly enough, in a way that works. Because the fact that her song was called 'Irony' and entirely failed to contain a single piece of irony is a little bit ironic!
Seems kinda stupid to say this but isnt the music called ironic?😑
I stand corrected.
Incidentally, Crash's example WOULD be ironic if the guy went somewhere else because he didn't think there was going to be any insulin there for a while- and then gets run over by an insulin delivery truck he didn't know was coming.
It would be better irony, however, if he was caught in an insulin shortage, nearly dies, and when the supplies are due to get there he is taken by ambulance to the hospital for treatment and then dies when the ambulance collides with the van carrying his shipment. That's much better because you can directly point to the efforts to save his life in fact killing him stone dead- which again is not irony in of itself, only annoying; it's ironic because he was killed by the very thing that was meant to be saving him. Sadly, most good irony is rather grotesque.
The Simpsons, incidentally, slips into clever irony itself when it parodies irony (keep up folks...) in the episode with the Springfield burglar, who, when caught, Homer says "Well well well... it seems the thief has been caught by the very person who was trying to catch him..."
Which causes Moe to say "How ironic..." though in this case he is being sarcastic, not ironic. It WOULD be ironic if a policeman chasing a thief for five years, with no luck, is caught by the thief breaking into his house and put under a citizen's arrest.
It would also be ironic if the thief is caught as a result of the actions of someone trying to make sure he got away with it. That would be:
"ill-timed or perverse arrival of event or circumstance in itself desirable"