another weirdly generalized "ironically"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'm going to narrow my proposed definition of "ironically" to "interestingly, in regard to the subject at hand; moreover."

 There has to be some connection between the "ironic" observation and what's just been said.  E.g.,

*Ironically, Carson City is the capital of Nevada.

That would seem to be impossible as a conversation opener.  But it should be perfectly apt (in the Pickwickian sense) as a follow-up to another speaker's remark that "Johnny Carson was my favorite TV host."

JL

"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mark A. Mandel"
Subject: Re: another weirdly generalized "ironically"
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Larry notes:
>>>
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.
<<<

Trying to think of what I would use in such circumstances, I came up with
several non-adverbial parentheticals --

"... and wouldn't you know it, it rained."
"... naturally ..."
"... of course ..."

-- all of which , or at least the last two, are used ironically here.


mark by hand

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