Oxymorons

March 23, 2005

In George Carlin’s book, Brain Drop­pings, Car­lin lists his favorite oxy­morons, includ­ing but not lim­ited to:

  • Assis­tant Supervisor
  • Orig­i­nal Copy
  • Lim­ited Life­time Guarantee
  • For­ward Lateral
  • Par­tial Cease-Fire
  • Unin­vited Guest
  • Full-time Day Care
  • Busi­ness Ethics

Just in case you didn’t know, accord­ing to Hyper­dic­tionary an oxy­moron (pro­nounced: ‘âksi’mowrân) means “con­join­ing con­tra­dic­tory terms”.

Do you have any favorite oxy­morons to share? Leave a com­ment and maybe this will turn into a repos­i­tory of oxy­morons to use in daily conversation. 

17 comments

I’ll start this off with:

Nat­ural Arti­fi­cial Fla­vor
Mil­i­tary Intelligence

by kartooner on March 23, 2005 at 10:27 am. Reply #

Jumbo Shrimp
All Alone
Pretty Ugly
Sweet Tart
Almost Always

by Scott on March 23, 2005 at 12:48 pm. Reply #

Microsoft Works
Will­ful Neg­li­gence
Vir­gin Birth
Stealth Bomber
Peace Offen­sive
Dereg­u­la­tion Law
Insane Logic
Exact Esti­mate
Taped Live

by Simon Jessey on March 23, 2005 at 1:29 pm. Reply #

How about…

Grad­u­ate Stu­dent
Found Miss­ing
Great Depres­sion
Legally Drunk
Job­less Recovery

by Greg on March 23, 2005 at 1:35 pm. Reply #

Fresh Frozen

by John Oxton on March 23, 2005 at 4:10 pm. Reply #

Near Miss

by Deborah on March 23, 2005 at 7:10 pm. Reply #

These are great so far.

Scott, I like “Almost Always” because I almost always use that.

Simon, “Microsoft Works”? Classic.

Greg, I’m dig­ging “Grad­u­ate Stu­dent”. I’m not there yet, but when I am I’ll have to wear a t-shirt or something.

John, I’m guess­ing you wouldn’t touch that with a 80-foot pole, “fresh frozen” is kind of scary, don’t you think? That’s insansely con­tra­dic­tory but you do see it alot in the frozen fish sec­tion of your local gro­cery store or market.

by kartooner on March 23, 2005 at 9:04 pm. Reply #

A few comes to mind:

Act Nat­u­rally
Vir­tual Real­ity
Soft Rock (Soft Porn, too!)
Pretty Ugly

by Matt Burris on March 23, 2005 at 10:44 pm. Reply #

Civil War

by Donnie Jeter on March 24, 2005 at 4:02 am. Reply #

I object to insane logic! There’s noth­ing wrong with insan­ity ;)

by Jarek Piórkowski on March 24, 2005 at 9:54 am. Reply #

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kt/1662972/

by beto on March 24, 2005 at 10:22 am. Reply #

Y’know fresh frozen, is quite an Amer­i­can thing as far as I know but in the UK the adver­tis­ers have started sneak­ing it in, in very British fash­ion… “all our food is freshly frozen at the source”.. ahem! scary stuff indeed… There is even one ad where they show live fish etc in plas­tic shop­ping bags, the tale being, freez­ing it is the only way they can get it to you as fresh as if it was live, local pro­duce… local pro­duce there’s an irony, if not an oxy­moron… any­way sorry about that, the state of food the west­ern world con­sumes winds me up!

by John Oxton on March 24, 2005 at 3:23 pm. Reply #

Win­dows Security

by Mike on March 24, 2005 at 6:53 pm. Reply #

New and Improved
Almost Never
Bit­ter Sweet
Clearly Con­fused
Real­ity TV

and

Pres­i­dent Bush (oh wait, you said oxy­moron, my bad)

by Shawn Grimes on March 25, 2005 at 12:13 am. Reply #

how about REAGAN MEMOIRS ???

by Chris from Ireland on April 12, 2005 at 10:46 am. Reply #

[…] these are bril­liant (via Joshuaink). […]

by the letter on September 26, 2005 at 6:01 pm. Reply #

Com­pas­sion­ate Conservative

by Nick Kamas on October 2, 2005 at 1:29 pm. Reply #

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