Oxymoron

[Wilson Gray]

On Mar 26, 2005, at 8:07 PM, James A. Landau wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Oxymoron
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> --------
>
> In a message dated Thu, 24 Mar 2005 10:37:45 -0500,
>   Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> writes
>
>>  The latest OED draft entry has cites back to 1902 for the general
>> sense of
>>  'a contradiction in terms', but a quick look at Newspaperarchive
>> suggests
>>  that this sense wasn't popularized until the mid-'70s.
>
> I learned the word "oxymoron" during the 1965-66 school year from my
> freshman
> American Literature professor.  I cannot recall his exact words so I
> cannot
> say whether he defined it as a deliberate rhetorical figure (is that
> what you
> meant?)  or simply as "a contradiction in terms", but ever since then
> I have
> used it with the latter meaning.  The next time I recall using
> "oxymoron" was in
> a statistics class in the early 1970's, when the instructor used the
> term
> "normal deviates" (yes, that is a technical term in statistics) and
> paused to
> comment on its being a contradiction, as was "cells multiply by
> dividing".  The
> class contributed a few more, including

> "Catholic parochial school"

I don't get it. Where's the contradiction? Or should the phrase read
"catholic parochial schools"?

-Wilson Gray




> Here's a cross-check.  The American Lit professor was Frederick Reeve,
> who
> sometime before 1965 worked on Webster's New World Dictionary.  You
> might check
> an early edition of WNWD (I have a copy but I can't find it at the
> moment) and
> see how it defines "oxymoron".
>
> OT:  "you can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think" was
> used in
> one of Spider Robinson's "Callahan's Bar" stories in Analog Science
> Fiction
> sometime in the late 1970's or possibly early 1980's.  Robinson prides
> himself
> (with good cause) as a punster, so he probably originated that punch
> line, or at
> least thought he did.  However, that does not rule out Dorothy Parker
> having
> originated it independently at an earlier date.
>
> MAD magazine circa 1960 had as the motto of unreconstructed
> Confederates "If
> at first you don't secede, try try again".  Which reminds me, my
> father was
> fond of the word "unreconstructed" meaning "reactionary",
> "antediluvian" etc,
> and I picked it up from him (as in the previous sentence)  Is this a
> common
> usage?
>
>      - James A. Landau
>