The Funny Oxymoron -By Jeyes

The Funny Oxymoron

“Always and never are two words you should always remembernever to use”, said Wendell Johnson. It is a deliberate mistake. English is a crazy language. In an anxiety to over-express ourselves in speech or writing, we end up creating a funny oxymoron. What is an oxymoron? By now it is a known secret. A figure of speech which brings two antonyms side by side, like the way you are trying toexactly estimate what I am saying and at last find it to be a definite maybe, creating a contradictory combination of words. The word oxymoron is derived from Ancient Greek words oxus, meaning sharp, and moros, meaning dull.

“You seem to be in a bi-directional mode today”, my junior commented the other day, pointing out to the oxymoras in my mail. Under pressure to achieve training targets, I had written, “These being the last two training programmes on safety, participants who could not attend the courses conducted in the recent past should be nominated”. It was a pretty ugly statement and I was a wise foolwho has legally murdered a sentence and felt like a morongasping for oxygen.

It is simply difficult to find an oxymoron in our everyday correspondence but if we keenly look, locating it is a definite possibility. In fact if an oxymoron is found missing in our day-to-day conversation we will feel terribly pleased.

Many a times, oxymoras are created inadvertently by the slip of tongue. Especially when we are addressing a small crowd gathered for the farewell reception of an office colleague. We start by sincerely tracing his recent history in the organization which appears to be his true story, but the audience understands the common differences between us in view of the fights we had, but they choose to maintain an expressive silence which was their only choice. 

After all, in such a parting gathering it is typically unusual to tell the truth. In an emotional compulsion to say good things about him we say that he is really an unsung hero and happily married and end up telling finally the exact opposite.  Everyone present knows that it is a genuinely fake farewell speech and fully empty though we tried to act naturally in that timeless moment. It becomes apractical joke and we feel like a suicide victim, just the way Samuel Goldwyn said, “If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive."

How-so-ever one is well versed with the English one can produce some of the most hilarious statements one may have ever come across. This is the most funny oxymoron quote, coming from the famous Oscar Wilde: "I can resist anything, except temptation."

Yes…in my youth, I could not resist the temptation of entering the nascent computer industry in India three decades back. When I wentall alone to join a budding computer institute they asked for theoriginal copy of my certificates and started teaching me BASIC language. Let me cut the long story short and give you a fairly accurate, detailed summary. After BASIC, the next wasAdvanced BASIC and further went on up to fuzzy logic in arandom order. It became a holy hell because less was more with computer programming and it was hardly easy for me. Soon I realized that I had not taken a calculated risk as my enthusiasm wasreal phony and had a numb sensation in my stomach. But students around me were glued to the computers looking like still life as if they were born dead but my enthusiasm was growing small and I felt alone in a crowd.

My unbiased opinion which is positively neutral is that computer industry is in constant change and one has to run fast to standwhere he is because the difference was same. It was a virtual reality that I was a misfit and called it quits. Funnily, to end it all, even for a shutdown of the computer I had to press the Start button! At last I consoled myself that after all I am talented in some other department and not a failure. I said to myself, “Always remember…you are unique, just like everyone else!”

After all this while if you have come to a preliminary conclusionthat this whole thing is just a word play, you are clearly confused.You see, it is serious fun!

 -J Jeyes, jjeyes@rediffmail.com.