Whether watching television, listening to the radio news, or even music, I’m always on alert for new oxymorons. For those who don’t know, an oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines words with opposite or seemingly contradictory meanings.
Today, I learned three new ones after first hearing a news reporter use the phrase “alien resident.” That same newsman then repeated “small crowd’ a couple of times to describe the turnout at this Democrat politician’s rally.
Later that same day, an Elton John song came on called “Honky Cat.” I know this tune well as it came out in 1972, the year I graduated from high school. As I listened to the lyrics, “high class ladies from New Orleans” grabbed my attention.
Looking at my wife, I told her that I’d just learned a new oxymoron: high-class prostitutes. When she mentioned Sir Elton John didn’t use this phrase, I told her that’s what he meant, but the singer was being politically correct. Later that day, when I researched the song’s meaning, I was correct.
I see ‘jumbo shrimp’ often on restaurant menus and in the frozen food section of grocery stores. ‘Little giant’ often describes a short fellow capable of doing humongous tasks, not to be confused with gentle giants. For information’s sake, Jolly Green Giant is the tall fellow hawking peas and carrots, and Jolly is a pretty ugly dude. Pretty ugly, of course, is an oxymoron.
I’ll try to think of other oxymorons and use them in sentences. When company stops by, my wife likes to break out ‘plastic silverware’ to save on dishwashing. The other day, she was looking for ‘original copies’ of something. Lake Mead is ‘growing smaller’ with each passing year. Hopefully, you spotted those three.
A former Army enlistee once told me ‘Military intelligence’ was an oxymoron, probably because he was unhappy with his limited time in the service after being dishonorably discharged. I’m sure he was one of a handful who believed that, because I didn’t. Good grief! Did you catch that last one?
I saw on Facebook that a Lake Havasu resident’s dog was ‘found missing’ from its yard the other day, but thankfully, the pooch returned home before coyotes got it. If you clearly misunderstood that one, you’re probably not the only one. I hear the ‘deafening silence’ here. This last example below has a more serious tone.
If the ‘organized chaos’ in this country continues as it currently is, with folks from other countries trying to erase our culture as we know it, ‘civil war’ will eventually break out.
There’s nothing civil about war, as some ‘resident Middle East uninvited aliens’ want you to think. Things could get ‘pretty ugly’ fast, so it’s time to lock and load if you haven’t already, and that survivalist term isn’t ‘silently whispered’ around our house, especially not by friends living in Alaska.
