Oxymorons

[stefanovic]

Looking for amusing ones.

• Awfully good
• Bittersweet
• Civil war
• Definite possibility
• Exact estimate
• Extinct life
• Grow smaller
• Only choice
• Random order

Happily married, pretty ugly, better team lost.

 

[Beezerk]

TAA defender ?

 

[stefanovic]

Had to look that one up. Attacking defender.

Fairway trees.
Temporary greens.
19th hole.

 

[Deleted member 1147]

"Fighting for peace...it's like f@@king for virginity"

 

[ManinBlack]

Police intelligence

 

[nickjdavis]

Female logic

 

[stefanovic]

Bus timetables.
Rap music.
Living fossils.
Almost exactly.

I don't know how speakers of other languages quite get their heads around English.
Phrasal verbs must also drive them mad.

Fed up doesn't mean eaten a big meal.
Shut up doesn't mean imprisoned.
Browned off doesn't mean sunburned.
There are hundreds of them.

 

[srixon 1]

Dry ice

 

[stefanovic]

English idioms also a nightmare.

• To break the ice – To get the conversation going
• To let the cat out of the bag – To reveal a secret
• To spill the beans – To reveal a secret
• To beat around the bush – To avoid talking about what is important
• To pull someone’s leg – To say something that is not true as a way of joking.
• Twist your arm.
• Face the music.
• Stab in the back.

 

[Oddsocks]

"Fighting for peace...it's like f@@king for virginity"

Tea all over the new work laptop ??

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Aye right

Not an oxymoron as such, but the combination of the two words changes the meaning of the combination to the opposite of their common individual meaning,

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

It's got political connotations but if I can be forgiven...Level Up or indeed Level Down. If it's level it's neither up nor down. Maybe

I'll go take a running jump...hold on...

 

[stefanovic]

Following the football last night how about this for an oxymoron:
Power Rangers.

Contranyms also drive me mad. Same word with different and even opposite meanings.
Sanguine, awful, handicap.

Or is it a contronym as sometimes spelt?

 

[Voyager EMH]

Flammable and inflammable meaning the same thing - I accept.

Idioms:
Nose-to-tail and back-to-back meaning the same thing - I do not accept.

 

[stefanovic]

Similar words with different meanings.
prescribe
proscribe

Hard words to spell.

onomatopoeia
naphtha
conscientious

 

[Voyager EMH]

"Going forward" - redundant phrase, since we can safely assume that time will not run backwards or freeze.

When people use this phrase, "from now on", is what I think they mean to say.

 

[Voyager EMH]

"10 times less likely"

"Do you mean, 'one tenth as likely' by any chance?"

 

[Voyager EMH]

Tricky spellings,

Ophthalmology
Subpoena
Affidavit

and my favourite...

dissect - which does not rhyme with bisect - it is dis and sect run together.

 

[Beezerk]

Seems this thread is full of sesquipedalians ?

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Similar but so often being used incorrectly…over-estimate and over-state.