Other forms: ironies
Irony is saying one thing and meaning the opposite, and trusting the other person to hear it. Standing in freezing rain and saying lovely day for it.
That is verbal irony. The other kind is situational: the fire station burns down, the man who left early to beat the traffic sits in it for an hour, the pickpocket has his own wallet taken. In stories there is dramatic irony, where the audience knows what the character does not — you can see the man behind the door and she cannot. The adjective is ironic, the adverb ironically, and the plural is ironies. Two traps worth marking: irony is not sarcasm, which is irony pointed at a person to wound them, and it is not bad luck or coincidence, which is what most misuses actually describe. The phrase is the irony OF something.
1nounironySaying the opposite of what you mean, in a way the listener is meant to notice.
“There was a touch of irony in his praise.”
2nounsituationA situation in which what happens is the opposite of what was expected or intended.
“The irony is that the safety inspection caused the accident.”
3nounplayIn a play or a story, the audience knowing something a character does not.
“The whole scene is heavy with dramatic irony.”
irony is a way of meaning something.
Irony comes from Ancient Greek eirōneia, meaning irony or pretext, built on eirōn — one who feigns ignorance. The eirōn was the character who played dumb and won anyway. The word travelled through Latin īrōnīa and Middle French ironie and was first written in English in 1502, still carrying its oldest idea: pretending you know less than you do.
Latin
īrōnīa
Middle French
ironie
English, today
irony
Built from
From Middle French ironie, from Old French -, from Latin īrōnīa. First attested in 1502. From Middle French ironie, from Old French -, from Latin īrōnīa, from Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία (“irony, pretext”), from εἴρων (“one who feigns ignorance”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Big Ideas, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 24 of A Man Called Ove.
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