"LIVING DEAD". THAT´S AN OXYMORON

A film...and an oxymoron

Have you ever thought seriously how it is possible that someone who is dead can hang around the town as if he or she were alive and kicking? Don´t rack your brains! Movies´ wonders apart, it is an obvious case of oxymoron.

Oxy...what? Yes, you had read it all right. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms, that is to say, words that are supposed not to be able to appear together.

All languages have many examples of oxymorons. We want to show you some of the most curious and eye-catching ones in the English language. It can be  a good way to reflect on the language and an amusing way to learn some vocabulary. We don´t mean to give you an exhaustive list since the Internet is full of enormous lists of them. Here we´ll review some examples:

First of all, we must divide oxymoron into some basic categories:

GENUINE OXYMORONS:

act naturally, clearly ambiguous; simply superb; second best; only choice


 
WORD GAMES:

living dead; virtual reality; friendly fire; peace offensive; non-alcoholic beer;

Virtual or real?



Can real beer lack alcohol?

SUBJECTIVE OXYMORONS:

British Cuisine; educational television; sensitive guy; honest politician; rap music; emotional intelligence.

Are rap and music two contradictory concepts?

If we have to give you our most sincere opinion, the last category is definitely our favourite one, and it´s that way for several reasons: It is the funniest one; it´s also the most creative kind of oxymorons since reality can suggest some new examples every day; furthermore, it´s the most personal way to create oxymorons, as different people can agree or disagree about an expression being an oxymoron or not.

Well, as we said at the beginning, you can find hundreds of expressions like these in the Internet. Make a try, you´ll have a funny time discovering how playful and puckish a language can be.

An example of the lists you can find surfing the Internet