another weirdly generalized "ironically"

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:26 AM -0400 7/12/05, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>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.
>
Agreed on all counts--except to ask whether you were using
"non-adverbial" (to refer e.g. to "naturally") ironically  ;-)

So presumably the idea is that when it's used to mean 'predictably'
or 'naturally', "ironically (enough)" is being used ironically...

L