friday's word: irony

david, liza, michael, + liz, spring of 2002

ie ruh ni

perception of incongruity between what is + what ought to be (esp. ‘cosmic irony’)

knowledge held by an audience outside an action that is not shared by the actors inside the action (esp. ‘dramatic irony’)

pretended innocence or ignorance to expose the lack of logic or consistency of a widely accepted assumption (esp. ‘socratic irony’)

intentional incongruity between what is said + what is meant to be understood, with the usual expectation that different hearers will pick up different senses of the meaning (esp. ‘verbal irony’)

greek ‘eironeia’—‘feigned naïveté’

synonyms: absurdity, double entendre, figurative language, incongruity, sarcasm, understatement