The Oxymoronic Persiflage

A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?

- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, scene i, 60-64

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow.

- Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene ii, 184

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
A damned saint, an honorable villain!

- Romeo and Juliet, Act III, scene ii, 75-79

Noticed something peculiar in these lines? Yes, apart from being Shakespearean lines, they are replete with Oxymorons, the literary figure of speech which brings two contradictory terms, phrases or ideas together to create a rhetorical effect by paradoxical means.The word oxymoron is derived from Ancient Greek words oxus, meaning sharp, and moros, meaning dull, a word that in itself is an oxymoron.

Here are a few oxymoronic quotes of famous personalities:

I can resist anything, except temptation - Oscar Wilde
The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep - W.C. Fields
I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught - Winston Churchill
I always advise people never to give advice - P. G. Wodehouse

The oxymorons are, at times, created inadvertently as a result of errors in conversation, as when you say "It is an accurate estimate", at times they are used as puns in speech, for which Samuel Goldwyn is very famous: "If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.", and at times they are used as paradoxes to highlight a contradiction as in this quote of Wendell Johnson "Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use".

Accurate estimate, climb down, all alone, deafening silence, found missing, thank God I’m an atheist .... the list of oxymoron examples we use in our daily conversation is pretty long. Sometimes we do it by mistake, and sometimes we do it to add satire to our conversation. Irrespective of why we do it or how it happens, these oxymorons do add humor even to the most serious or dull conversations.

William Safire offers his Great Rules for Writing in the New York Times and very joyfully breaks each rule as he writes them down. Here's a partial list of these rules for you to read and revel in their self-contradictory nature:

"Do not put statements in the negative form.  Remember to never split an infinitive. And don't start sentences with a conjunction. It is incumbent on one to avoid archaisms. The passive voice should never be used. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives."

To read all the rules, click here.
And finally, how about this: Click the Start button to Shut Down the computer, oxymoronic, isn't it?

PS: Pleonasms are the opposites (antonyms) of oxymora. A pleonasm consists of two concepts (usually two words) that are redundant for instance “more than enough; overabundant; excess; and superfluous; a true fact and a free gift”.