Literature Glossary

Don’t be an oxymoron. Know your literary terms.

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Oxymoron

Definition:

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that puts together two seemingly contradictory words or phrases that actually end up making a whole lot of sense.

Example? "The jumbo shrimp she brought to the party was terribly good." (There were two of them in that sentence. Did you catch them?)

Have a peek at our discussion of oxymora (the plural of the word) in Romeo and Juliet.

Shmoop's favorite oxymoron? The living dead, a.k.a. ZOMBIES.

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