We’re all familiar with the term oxymoron. Oxymorons are a subset of the expressions called contradictions in terms. The definition of an oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms. Oxymoron is a loanword from Greek oxy (‘sharp’) and moros (‘dull’); itself an oxymoron. In popular usage, the term oxymoron is sometimes used more loosely, in the sense of a simple contradiction in terms.
One of the most famous examples of colloquial oxymorons is jumbo shrimp. The term Jumbo, coming from the name of P.T. Barnum’s enormous African Elephant, now synonymous with ‘large’ and shrimp has taken on the meaning of ‘small’.
Insight: The other day I got to thinking whether is there a word so confused, so self-contradictory that it is its own oxymoron. Well, I came up with two: naturalize and favorites. Naturalize means literally, “to put into the state of nature;” however, to be in the state of nature means to be unaffected by human intervention. The word favorite is itself a superlative, meaning something that one likes the best. The word favorites is then a plural superlative, itself an oxymoron.
