oxymorous
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Senses: examples: text: The great Teacher was well aware of this in his choice of parables (Matt. 13; Luk. 11: 1—13 et al.), gnomes (Matt. 5), oxymorous statements (Matt. 5: 29, 30), every day incidents and events (Luk. 10, 25—37), common figures (Joh. 16: 20, 21), an easy , unscholastic style of speaking, rapid change of manner according to the changes in his thought and the requirements of the occasion. […] In this concrete sense we hold that the forms of truth have vital relation to application, as witness Christ’s use of parables, figures, gnomes, oxymorous address and the like.
ref: 1905, Tidskrift för Teologi och Kyrkliga Frågor, pages 133–134:
text: I met a graceful English maid / Upon the Shwe Dagon / Her age was twenty-one, she said, / Her hair was sort of roan, / She had a soulful tearful air, / (It may have been a ruse,) / And on her feet she wore a pair / Of oxymorous shoes / […]
ref: 1911, J. M. S., The Pagoda and the Poet and Other Verses, British Burma Press, page 23:
text: The terms are oxymorous, of course, and an oxymoron may be regarded as a condensed paradox; but it is just the paradoxical situation of man with which the poet is concerned.
ref: 1964, Lawrence Leo Stahlberger, The Symbolic System of Majakovskij, Mouton & Co., page 76:
text: […] usual biological allusions, like "lungs." "Golden tears" is oxymorous. Death is so much a part and parcel of life that every moment on earth is just a moment of waiting for death.
ref: 1966, Romanus Nnagbo Egudu, The Matter and Manner of Modern West African Poetry in English: A Study of Okigbo, Clark, Awoonor-Williams and Peters, Michigan State University, Department of English, page 257:
text: Philosophy can achieve its ultimate goal only by becoming “popularized” or, in Cieszkowski’s oxymorous expression, “Sie muss sich in die Tiefe verflachen.”
ref: 1979, Louis Dupré, “Rationality in Marx’s Concept of History”, in Theodore F. Geraets, editor, Rationality To-day (Collection Philosophica; 13), Ottawa, Ont.: The University of Ottawa Press, →ISBN, page 139:
text: One-year and two-year secretarial courses were offered, including an oxymorous liberal arts-secretarial "church secretarial certificate" for those who wished to combine somewhat contradictory disciplines.
ref: 1979 July, Eugene H. Sloan, “Hallowed Traditions Marked Tennessee College”, in Rutherford County Historical Society Publication No. 13, Murfreesboro, Tenn.: Rutherford County Historical Society, page 19:
text: Agreement even seemed to cheer him up, and from there our discussion began to take on a more relaxed and customary shape and to gravitate towards our usual oxymorous small-talk on large topics.
ref: 1984, Amanda Prantera, Strange Loop, New York, N.Y.: E. P. Dutton, Inc., →ISBN, page 75:
text: The oxymorous yoking together of the words “selfish” and “generosity” is a highly artistic way of expressing the tension of discernible action and inner motive.
ref: 1985, Littcrit, Institute of Correspondence Courses, University of Kerala, page 18:
text: I have not said much about Musica Ficta's multiple puns, parodies, oxymorous games with language.
ref: 1993, Veronica Brady, Westerly, page 130:
text: Thus, in this introit to the songs of redemptive self-annihilation, the poet already juxtaposes in these oxymorous collocations words that intimate the paradox of his self-sacrifice.
ref: 1993, Zeitschrift für Afrikastudien, page 32:
text: It starts to address the oppressive, inhuman and alienated aspects of this advancement. A celebration of repression, even. This oxymorous statement provides the backbone to Takamatsu’s architecture.
ref: 1994, EAR., Department of Architecture, School of the Built Environment, University of Edinburgh, page 146:
text: The planet is a global village, if we may adop^([sic]) this oxymorous expression which has now become quite a commonplace also in scientific discourses.
ref: 1995, The Proceedings of 1995 Annual Meeting, Research Committee on Sociology of Law, International Sociological Association: Legal Culture: Encounters and Transformations, Japan Committee for the RCSL95, Japanese Association of Sociology of Law, page 114:
text: The words “love” and “rainbow” would disappear from his oxymorous hymn of love and hate, which would thus be reduced to a lament of hate.
ref: 2000, Arnold Cassola, The Literature of Malta: An Example of Unity in Diversity, Minima, →ISBN, page 173:
text: Above considerations reveal Russell’s agnosticism moderated, of course, by the specifications "For the moment" and "though perhaps not permanently", which explains also his oxymorous satisfaction, that mathematical philosophy, through the logical theory of arithmetic, puts off saying, what we mean by numbers, by ’1’ and ’2’ and so on, omission for which , however, he, also, accused the formalists.
ref: 2002, Philosophical Inquiry, page 91:
text: This intertextual relationship between the uses of the term, however, may generate, intentionally or unintentionally, a type of negativity, which would rely on the oxymorous nature of the concept of ‘katharsis through pity and fear’ and not simply exist despite it.
ref: 2004, Olga Taxidou, Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning, Edinburgh University Press, →ISBN, page 116:
text: What is more, in its effort to maintain the myth of free education and satisfy superficially the growing social demand for attainment of tertiary qualifications, the state creates more and more universities around the country, the academic areas of which show little, if any, connection with market demands and student inclinations (Massalas, 2002). This practice has triggered opposition even from the very academic community on grounds of being dually oxymorous: the state enlarges its financial responsibilities in running new universities, when it does so insufficiently for the already existed.
ref: 2006, Aristotelis Stamoulas, “Forms of infringement of the right to education in contemporary Greek educational structures”, in International Education Journal, volume 7, →ISSN, page 79:
text: The idea of critical self-awareness and the oxymorous nature of participant observation, which leads most times to the observation of the participant and hence the participation of the participant (Tedlock 1991), all blend together within the ethnographic scene of encounter which in turn becomes the ethnographic dialogue of the self and other.
ref: 2006, Anastasia Christou, Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity: Second-Generation Greek-Americans Return ‘Home’ (IMISCOE Dissertations), Amsterdam University Press, →ISBN, page 27:
text: In its light-hearted way, this article brought up to date Osbert Lancaster’s earlier list of historical styles for the domestic interior in Homes Sweet Homes by offering the apparently oxymorous ‘Contemporary Period’. The modern(ist) interior had become another period.
ref: 2006, Jeremy Aynsley, “The modern period room – a contradiction in terms?”, in Penny Sparke, Brenda Martin, Trevor Keeble, editors, The Modern Period Room: The Construction of the Exhibited Interior 1870 to 1950, London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 28:
text: The king was, in Philippe Buc’s formulation, “oxymorous” (roi oxymore) – “gracious”, “wise” and “terrible” at the same time.
ref: 2008, Gábor Klaniczay, “The Ambivalent Model of Solomon for Royal Sainthood and Royal Wisdom”, in Ivan Biliarsky, Radu G. Păun, editors, The Biblical Models of Power and Law: Papers of the International Conference, Bucharest, New Europe College 2005, Peter Lang, →ISBN, section II (The Prophets and the Kings), page 92:
text: For the seemingly oxymorous formula “only the wealthy can become poor” [“può diventare povero solo chi è ricco”], as a paraphrase of H. Grundmann, Movimenti religiosi nel Medioevo. […]
ref: 2021, Rodney Lokaj, “Clare the Epistolographer against Church and Empire stupenda paupertas vs stupor mundi”, in Pietro Colletta, Teofilo De Angelis, Fulvio Delle Donne, editors, Il Regno di Sicilia in età normanna e sveva: Forme e organizzazioni della cultura e della politica (Mondi Mediterranei; 6), Basilicata University Press, →ISBN, page 308:
text: It is not uncommon for medical or literary writers in antiquity to conceive of a disease as an animate entity that takes residence and feeds on the patient’s body; in line with this tradition, Aretaeus explores the idea of disease qua lived experience to an (almost oxymorous) extreme: epilepsy literally lives “side by side” (ξυμβιοῖ) with the patient, and ceases to “exist” only when death takes them both (μέσφι θανάτου).
ref: 2022, George Kazantzidis, “Sex and Epilepsy: Seizures and Fluids in Greek Medical Imagination”, in Andreas Serafim, George Kazantzidis, Kyriakos Demetriou, editors, Sex and the Ancient City: Sex and Sexual Practices in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, →ISBN, part II (Sex and Medicine), page 189:
text: Thanks to the flexibility of the fabrics ant their attitude to be functionalized, membrane architecture seeks even a stronger link with nature, almost looking for a new oxymorous dimension of natural artificiality, where designers will be able to explore a blurred boundary between ecofacts and artefacts, imitating the adaptivity and transformability of natural systems for the enhancement of the building skin.
ref: 2023, Alessandra Zanelli, Carlotta Mazzola, “Towards the Smart Filter”, in Alessandra Zanelli, Carol Monticelli, Nebojsa Jakica, Zhengyu Fan, editors, Lightweight Energy: Membrane Architecture Exploiting Natural Renewable Resources (Research for Development), Springer Nature, →ISBN, pages 26–27:
glosses: Synonym of oxymoronic.
synonyms: word: oxymoronic