In a recent note, john gilmore said: > Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 13:13:04 +0000 > > It is almost certainly too late to recover the legitimate use of 'oxymoron' > here; but it is perhaps worth noting that its original and still its only > legitimate use is as a rhetorical figure that states an apparent > contradition and then shows that it is in fact no such thing. > I hadn't understood that; I'm not sure I do yet. Can you enlighten us with examples of a fully legitimate oxymoron and a conventional, illegitimate oxymoron.
> Use of 'oxymoron' in this sense has a long history, extending from the > Alexandrian rhetoricians forward through Milton, Voltaire, Burke, and I. A. > Richards. The cute folk etymology that relates 'oxymoron' to 'moron' has > less weight, and it of course marks its users as uninformed. > It's more than a folk etymology. I understand that "oxy" means "sharp" and "moron" means dull. So "oxymoron" is an onomatopoeia, notional rather than phonic. (Is there a precise name for such a figure?) A free English translation that nicely mirrors the sense is "bittersweet". And I had believed that the etymology of the English "moron" was related; viz. cognitively dull. -- gil -- StorageTek INFORMATION made POWERFUL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
