sarcasm

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Figurative use of language
allegorically
allusion
anthropomorphic
anthropomorphism
anthropomorphize
double meaning
fig
figurative
figuratively
figure of speech
metaphorical
metonymic
mixed metaphor
non-literal
non-metaphorical
so to speakidiom
speak
symbol
trope
unironic

irony | American Dictionary

irony
noun[ C/U ]
us/ˈɑɪ·rə·ni, ˈɑɪ·ər·ni/
a type of usually humorous expression in which you say the opposite of what you intend:
[ U ]He had a powerful sense of irony, and you could never be absolutely sure when he was serious.
Irony is also something that has a different or opposite result from what is expected:
[ C ]It is one of the ironies of life that by the time you have earned enough money for the things you always wanted, you no longer have the energy to enjoy them.
literature
Irony is a style of writing in which there is a noticeable, often humorous, difference between what is said and the intended meaning.

Examples of irony

irony
Throughout, he did not allow the role's personified irony to come out.
The irony is, of course, that the serial-sequential nature of speech is precisely the property that a writing system avoids.
The primary agency of this irony of course is the actors' personal presence on the stage.
Second irony: the attacks fulfil a role that they are not meant to.
The irony was that conservatives and liberals both believed that public opinion was on the other side.
Since the song and its lyrics have not yet been heard by the film's audience, any irony is lost.
But when conversational irony is considered, the inappropriateness of analysis in terms of utterances lifted from any conversational context becomes clear.
However, both elements of this argument, irony and appropriateness, can be refined if the fresco is located in its historical context.
Accordingly, they develop a computational model of irony based on three types of ironic situations, which they call intentional, serendipitous, and competence irony.
What these ironies reveal is that battles over border policing must of necessity be battles over the appearance of control rather than over real control.
The curse, in a standard tragic irony, finally redounds upon her; the natural order of gender has its revenge.
The irony is that the school is a product of this larger focus, this sense of community, both of which the suburbanite wishes to buy.
The awful irony of these kinds of community initiatives is that they are often co-opted as a justification for the dismantling of the welfare state.
The longer the chorus sings of the city's prosperous past, the greater the irony in view of the shreds hanging down the young king's armour.
Any alternative proposal must profit from their insights while exploring how an analysis of irony might be illuminated by work in other domains.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withirony

irony

These are words often used in combination with irony.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

bitter irony
It was a bitterirony that a movement so concerned with the politics of production should have had so little leverage at the workplace for much of the period.
certain irony
There is a certainirony to the position.
cruel irony
There is a further cruelirony in all this.
From the
Hansard archive