User talk:Oxymoron~enwiki

Hello there Oxymoron, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit Wikipedia:How does one edit a page and experiment at Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. BTW, nice addition to the juggling article. Cheers! --maveric149

Problems with the article that's there now

Briefly

1.the etymology is misleading

2.most of the examples are wrong

3.the excursions into math, physics and linguistics are inappropriate and confusing

4.the terminology used is non-standard (as far as I know)

5.other and miscellaneous.

What my proposed new article would say, more or less

Etymology

From 5th cen. Lat. oxymoron, from Gr. ὀξύς, sharp + μωρός, dull, foolish. [1]. The Greek word ὀξύμωρον is not found in the extant Greek sources, according to the OED [2].

Discussion

"Oxymoron" is a figure of speech in which words or phrases with contrasting meanings or force are used together for effect. The effect can be ironic, humorous, paradoxical or merely emphatic. Here’s a well-known example:

yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

Serv'd only to discover sights of woe

Milton, Paradise Lost, 1.62ff.

and some others:

O quike deeth, O swete harm so queynte,

Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, 1.411

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come;

Marlowe, The Tragicall History of Dr. Faustus

The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe, 

Like a thick midnight-fog, mov'd there so slow, 

He did not stay, nor go; 

Henry Vaughan, "The World"

Traditional oxymorons are plentiful in Shakespeare:

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

O any thing, of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness! serious vanity!

Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!

Romeo and Juliet, 1.1

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,

That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Ibid., 2.2

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

Macbeth, 1.3

The following are not oxymorons, but seeming paradoxes, paradoxes that are shown not to be paradoxes at all. The reconciliation of opposites, not the clash of opposites, is the point:

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!

My tables,—meet it is I set it down,

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;

Hamlet, 1.5

(Hamlet comments bitterly on his own naiveté. He, the keeper of a commonplace book no less, should have realized that a villain doesn’t always act like one. He’s not contrasting opposites for effect, but saying villainy and a likable demeanor can go together.)

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;

Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!

King Lear, 1.1

(A series of seeming paradoxes that describe the strange position Cordelia's in—she’s literally both rich and poor, choice and forsaken, loved and despised.)

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

("Ditties of no tone" is another "seeming paradox", and not an oxymoron, for two reasons: first, because it’s elaborately explained and justified throughout the entire poem; and second, because the ditties operate on the spirit, not the hearing, and may indeed have different properties than audible music.)

Another way "oxymoron" has been used

More recently, oxymoron has also been used as an exact synonym for "contradiction in terms", (Lat. contradictio in adjecto, self-contradiction), while its original meaning has been forgotten by almost everyone. Contradiction is a logical, not a rhetorical, concept: you can allege, believe, doubt, deny, disprove, confirm, that a proposition contradicts itself. An oxymoron, on the other hand, is a device employed consciously for effect. It's purposely illogical.

"Oxymoron" in this second sense is almost always used to be funny — it's a long, peculiar word, too technical for most contexts, and (let’s be honest) does sound a bit odd. To say it aloud, you have to say "ox", "oxy", and "moron", which are also slightly funny. Fowler refers to this use of long, unfamiliar words as "polysyllabic humor", and doesn't like it much. [Modern English Usage, 1st ed.] If the reader (or listener) doesn’t find "oxymoron" ipso facto amusing, he might at least be proud of knowing what the word means, or meant. Or he might be annoyed, or feel his intelligence insulted, or both, and say "Not this again!", and hurl his book into the fireplace.

An example of this type of "oxymoron" is

the world's smallest giant.

C. S. Lewis (?)

Wikipedia does not take any stand on the use of lame humor in writing. But considering the rationale for using oxymoron, the confusion to which that use has led, and the unlikelihood that it will provide anything further in the way of amusement, we suggest that anyone planning to use it except in its technical sense think carefully before doing so.

A few of many possible objections to my replacement article

1.Some people will feel this article violates Wikipedia's principle of neutrality or its reluctance to prescribe. I don't, personally, but the principle is extremely important in other cases, and tolerating value-judgments here may be used to justify the lowering of standards elsewhere.

2.The "normative" philosophy favored by American dictionaries may be invoked. (For instance, if "reticent" is used to mean "reluctant" by enough people for long enough, then it means "reluctant"—vox populi vox Dei,—and etymology be damned.)

3.Some people will want the humorous remarks taken out.

MrDebaker (talk) 05:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed

Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Oxymoron. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Oxymoron~enwiki that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name. If you think you might own all of the accounts with this name and this message is in error, please visit Special:MergeAccount to check and attach all of your accounts to prevent them from being renamed.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours,
Keegan Peterzell
Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation

02:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed

This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: Special:GlobalRenameRequest. -- Keegan (WMF) (talk)

17:20, 22 April 2015 (UTC)