another weirdly generalized "ironically"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Ironically, Larry, we young moderns are all using "ironically" to mean "interestingly."

So get with it.

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: another weirdly generalized "ironically"
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>From a discussion on WFAN sports talk radio this morning, recapping a
Yankees game over the weekend, co-host Sid Rosenberg described how
Yankees rookie Robinson Cano failed to bunt the potential tying and
winning runs over from 1st and 2nd base in the ninth inning, and then
"ironically enough" hit into a double play, the possibility of which
is precisely what a successful bunt would have been designed to
avoid. In trying to come up with a non-baseball analogy, I came up
with this:

"I forgot to bring my umbrella to work with me today, and ironically
enough it rained."

Even "coincidentally" or "curiously enough" doesn't work as a
paraphrase here. Maybe "predictably" would work instead, but that
doesn't seem particularly ironic. It seems to me that Cano hitting a
game-winning home run would have been a better example of irony.

larry

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