From Richard Nordquist,
Your Guide to Grammar & Composition.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

Definition:

Use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea. Three kinds of irony are commonly recognized:

1. Verbal irony (also called sarcasm) is a trope in which a writer makes a statement in which the actual meaning differs from the meaning that the words appear to express.
2. Irony of situation is a trope in which accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as the poetic justice of a TV weather presenter getting caught in a surprise rainstorm.
3. Dramatic irony involves a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that a character in the story does not know.

Etymology:

From Greek, "feigned ignorance"

Examples & Observations:

• "It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, launder became a dirty word."
  (William Zinsser)



• "Irony has always been a primary tool the under-powered use to tear at the over-powered in our culture. But now irony has become the bait that media corporations use to appeal to educated consumers. . . . It's almost an ultimate irony that those who say they don't like TV will sit and watch TV as long as the hosts of their favorite shows act like they don't like TV, either. Somewhere in this swirl of droll poses and pseudo-insights, irony itself becomes a kind of mass therapy for a politically confused culture. It offers a comfortable space where complicity doesn't feel like complicity. It makes you feel like you are counter-cultural while never requiring you to leave the mainstream culture it has so much fun teasing. We are happy enough with this therapy that we feel no need to enact social change. We become addicted to the therapy as a soothing process, and no longer consider its results."
  (Dan French, review of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 2001)

Pronunciation: I-ruh-nee

Also Known As: eironeia, illusio, dry mock