Oxymoron
A figure that pairs two contradictory terms in a single phrase — 'deafening silence', 'bittersweet'.
An oxymoron is a phrase that yokes two apparently contradictory terms into a single image: 'deafening silence', 'bittersweet', 'living dead', 'open secret'. The contradiction is the point — the figure asks the reader to hold both meanings at once, and the meaning emerges from the tension.
Oxymora work because real experience is often contradictory in exactly this way. Silence in a tense room really does feel deafening. The end of a long project really is bittersweet. The figure names something a single word cannot.
Many compound oxymora ('jumbo shrimp', 'civil war', 'unbiased opinion') survive as jokes about language itself. The clever ones outlive the joke.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
Keep reading the glossary
A grammatical balance of two opposed ideas — 'to be or not to be'.
An ABBA word-order reversal — 'ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country'.
Deliberate exaggeration for effect — not meant to be taken literally.
The art of persuasive speaking and writing — the discipline behind every great quoted line.