shouldn’t there be a word that means what Ironic is mistaken for meaning? I mean the things mentioned in the song are more than just unfortunate coincidence they have a sad congruence as well. That needs a word if anything does.
A little hidden sarcasm free the gas My hotforwords random lesson and Quote
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” – Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821
Satire can be a constructive form of “Irony” in that it attempts to amend the self-satisfied.
- Doesn’t try to inflict pain on the person like Sarcasm and Lampoon.
- Not cynical as Sardonic is.
- Addresses the vice or folly rather than attacking the person.
- Doesn’t require a wise genius like Socratic Irony.
- Its something we can do rather than observe like Situational Irony.
It’s fun to do and funny to others even if the self-satisfied doesn’t get it because the others do. Combine Satire with wit, innuendo or tonque-in-cheek and the fun is even funnier.
The etymology makes a huge leap which hopefully Marina can explain to us. We know Satire from 1387 implied in satiric as “work intended to ridicule vice or folly”. Earlier it’s from Latin satura, in lanx satura “mixed dish, dish filled with various kinds of fruit” or literally “full dish”. The leap was by Ennius (father of Roman poetry) who assailed the prevailing vices, one after another, in a collection of poems. What did Ennius do that was so good that the etymology of Satire passes through his work? That’s a question for HotForWords.
Satire has come in many flavors many of which were not kind to the satirized.
In Contemporary Satire, Stephen Colbert provides a “full dish” example in the Colbert Report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire#Contemporary_satire) wherein he satirizes an opinionated and self-righteous television commentator. Speaking of Pinhead, Marina appeared on his TV show recently and discussed other words as well.
More exerpts from Wikipedia:
“The Colbert Report is instructive in the methods of contemporary American satire. Colbert’s character is an opinionated and self-righteous commentator who, in his TV interviews, interrupts people, points and wags his finger at them, and “unwittingly” uses every logical fallacy known to man. In doing so, he demonstrates the principle of modern American political satire: the ridicule of the actions of politicians and other public figures by taking all their statements and purported beliefs to their furthest (supposedly) logical conclusion, thus revealing their perceived hypocrisy.”
“Doonesbury also presents an example of how satire can cause social change. The comic strip satirized a Florida county that had a law requiring minorities to have a passcard in the area; the law was soon repealed with an act nicknamed the Doonesbury Act.”
“many recent television “satires” contain strong elements of parody and caricature; for instance the popular animated series The Simpsons and South Park both parody modern family and social life by taking their assumptions to the extreme”.
A vegetarin goes hiking through the forrest and gets atacked and eaten by a mountainlion. Up in heaven one of his friends ask ‘what did you die of?‘ and he answers IRONY
Interesting that It’s been used so wrong, but I think the confusion came from things like “I hate TV” meanwhile you watch it.
Most Irony I see is done as follows: (are they correcT?)
Somebody tries to do something to you, such as harassing you. They then accuse you of harassing them.
Another form is in a cartoon I saw: Kim Possible
-kim possible gets sick, and tries to guard a top secret device for scientists
-Bad guys steal it, one of them catching the cold from Kim
-Cold spreads throughout the layer, making it difficult to do anything
-After lots of ordeals with this cold virus, Kim finally returns the device to the scientists and asks them what it is for, exactly
-the Scientists state “it cures the common cold” (which could have made everything a whole lot easier)
I like both the new and classic use of ‘ironic’ though Marina is right, it is used incorrectly given any definition. What’s passed off as irony is more bad luck or poor dramatic writing.
headwaves… when I made that video I was being a bit of a purist.. and we call know that words change their meaning over time… and through misuse.. the meaning of ironic is changing as well… which sucks.. but oh well
They told me about the misuse of “ironic” in like 6th grade or something, and I have never been able to keep it straight. Frankly, I still think I will not be able to keep it straight because I am not old, lazy, and set in my ways.
But if I were younger, I would remember it always because Marina is so acute.
Like, an angle.
(No, I did not mean angel)
Although, she is sort of angelic too, in a twisted and mischievous sort of way.
But I babble.
Blither is a word too. Someone who I thought of as quite intelligent acted today as if I meant babble when I said blither. I totally meant blither. I mean, who hasn’t heard of a blithering idiot?
They way you describe the proper use of the word irony sounds very much like what most people call sarcasm. Could you explain the difference and how the irony became the new sarcasm?
Here is a great analysis of the ironic issue in the song Ironic from wikipedia.com:
The song’s usage of the word “ironic” attracted attention for what many feel is an improper application of the term. Some situations that Morissette describes in the song are arguably examples of cosmic irony: events that, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, appear “as if in mockery of the fitness or rightness of things”, such as “a death row pardon/two minutes too late”. Others appear to be merely unfortunate (not even improbable or coincidental), such as “a black fly/in your Chardonnay” or “A traffic jam/when you’re already late.” If one discounts cosmic irony, however, it is arguable that the song is ironic in and of itself – there is a fundamental incongruity in a song titled “Ironic” which ultimately contains no irony, an interpretation that Morissette herself has supported.
An analysis of the ironic lack of irony in “Ironic” by Irish comedian Ed Byrne includes:
“There’s nothing ironic about being stuck in a traffic jam when you’re late for something. Unless you’re a town planner. If you were a town planner and you were on your way to a seminar of town planners at which you were giving a talk on how you solved the problem of traffic congestion in your area, couldn’t get to it because you were stuck in a traffic jam, that’d be well ironic.”
“Rain on your wedding day is ironic only if marrying a weatherman and he set the date.”
“A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break, that’s inconsiderate office management. A no-smoking sign in a cigarette factory – irony.”
“Ten thousand spoons? How big is your sink, Alanis? What do you need this knife for – to stab the bloke who keeps leaving spoons all over your house?”
The song and video were discussed at length in VH1’s I Love the ’90s. Mo Rocca commented in the broadcast, “Irony is the disparity between what you expect will happen and what does happen. So raining on your wedding day isn’t ironic; it’s just crappy. It would have been ironic if she had lived in a place like Seattle and traveled to the desert of Mexico for a wedding, and it ended up raining there, but not in Seattle. Alanis always gets the last laugh though. We all sit here, saying her song isn’t ironic, but in fact, that’s pretty ironic that she wrote a song called ‘Ironic’ that wasn’t really ironic. Those Canadians are pretty crafty.”
“Ironic” was parodied in an MTV television commercial featuring Donal Logue as a cab-driver with his quadruplicate counterparts spouting similarly un-ironic ideas. (One sample: “It’s like meeting the girl of your dreams and finding out she’s five.”)
The video clip of “Ironic” is mentioned in the novel “Naiv Super” of Norwegian writer Erlend Loe.
Morissette herself does in fact acknowledge that “Ironic” is not filled with ironies and this in itself is what makes it ironic. Additionally, she confirms that she is a self-dubbed “malapropism queen” and that the song was lighthearted and not taken too seriously at the time it was written.
“ “For me the great debate on whether what I was saying in ‘Ironic’ was ironic wasn’t a traumatic debate. I’d always embraced the fact that every once in a while I’d be the malapropism queen. And when Glen and I were writing it, we definitely were not doggedly making sure that everything was technically ironic. It’s a testament to the fact that we didn’t think it was going to be put under the microscope by 30 million people. For me the sweetest moment came in New York when a woman came up to me in a record store and said, ‘So all those things in the ‘Ironic’ aren’t ironic.’ And then she said, ‘And that’s the irony.” I said, ‘Yup.’ To me it’s a real snapshot of a nineteen-year-old’s definition and version of how life worked at the time. All that ‘Ironic’ touches on spawned all my future inquiries into and current understandings of the mysteries of life.”
A terrific lesson.
If I said this honest explanation of Ironic indicated you were [Sophisticated], I am sure many would agree.
Would you Marina?
shouldn’t there be a word that means what Ironic is mistaken for meaning? I mean the things mentioned in the song are more than just unfortunate coincidence they have a sad congruence as well. That needs a word if anything does.
Glad you “ironed” out that misunderstanding!
A little hidden sarcasm free the gas My hotforwords random lesson and Quote
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” – Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821
Dear Miss Orlova,
Is it Ironic that I am posting this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQWoKLoDXao
?
So I understand Irony as saying “It’s like Rain on our wedding day” when actually she means that it’s a good thing?
Ironically,
TOF
Oh no,
That’s the wrong song…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v9yUVgrmPY
There it is…
(Was that Ironic?) I Don’t Know…
TOF
How Ironic! Oops!
In this case how would you comment the title of move – Ironiya Sud’bi.
I think that this is a bit straight narrow deffinition for this word.
I, like, never got that before (he said intending irony).
Word request for “Satire”
Satire can be a constructive form of “Irony” in that it attempts to amend the self-satisfied.
- Doesn’t try to inflict pain on the person like Sarcasm and Lampoon.
- Not cynical as Sardonic is.
- Addresses the vice or folly rather than attacking the person.
- Doesn’t require a wise genius like Socratic Irony.
- Its something we can do rather than observe like Situational Irony.
It’s fun to do and funny to others even if the self-satisfied doesn’t get it because the others do. Combine Satire with wit, innuendo or tonque-in-cheek and the fun is even funnier.
The etymology makes a huge leap which hopefully Marina can explain to us. We know Satire from 1387 implied in satiric as “work intended to ridicule vice or folly”. Earlier it’s from Latin satura, in lanx satura “mixed dish, dish filled with various kinds of fruit” or literally “full dish”. The leap was by Ennius (father of Roman poetry) who assailed the prevailing vices, one after another, in a collection of poems. What did Ennius do that was so good that the etymology of Satire passes through his work? That’s a question for HotForWords.
Satire has come in many flavors many of which were not kind to the satirized.
In Contemporary Satire, Stephen Colbert provides a “full dish” example in the Colbert Report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire#Contemporary_satire) wherein he satirizes an opinionated and self-righteous television commentator. Speaking of Pinhead, Marina appeared on his TV show recently and discussed other words as well.
More exerpts from Wikipedia:
“The Colbert Report is instructive in the methods of contemporary American satire. Colbert’s character is an opinionated and self-righteous commentator who, in his TV interviews, interrupts people, points and wags his finger at them, and “unwittingly” uses every logical fallacy known to man. In doing so, he demonstrates the principle of modern American political satire: the ridicule of the actions of politicians and other public figures by taking all their statements and purported beliefs to their furthest (supposedly) logical conclusion, thus revealing their perceived hypocrisy.”
“Doonesbury also presents an example of how satire can cause social change. The comic strip satirized a Florida county that had a law requiring minorities to have a passcard in the area; the law was soon repealed with an act nicknamed the Doonesbury Act.”
“many recent television “satires” contain strong elements of parody and caricature; for instance the popular animated series The Simpsons and South Park both parody modern family and social life by taking their assumptions to the extreme”.
A vegetarin goes hiking through the forrest and gets atacked and eaten by a mountainlion. Up in heaven one of his friends ask ‘what did you die of?‘ and he answers IRONY
ops I mean ATTACKED not ATACKED
I love you hotly, Hotforwords. – That is definately not ironic, but true!
Thanks for the lesson,
Shawn M. Norris
Knowledge makes it livable.
Interesting that It’s been used so wrong, but I think the confusion came from things like “I hate TV” meanwhile you watch it.
Most Irony I see is done as follows: (are they correcT?)
Somebody tries to do something to you, such as harassing you. They then accuse you of harassing them.
Another form is in a cartoon I saw: Kim Possible
-kim possible gets sick, and tries to guard a top secret device for scientists
-Bad guys steal it, one of them catching the cold from Kim
-Cold spreads throughout the layer, making it difficult to do anything
-After lots of ordeals with this cold virus, Kim finally returns the device to the scientists and asks them what it is for, exactly
-the Scientists state “it cures the common cold” (which could have made everything a whole lot easier)
I like both the new and classic use of ‘ironic’ though Marina is right, it is used incorrectly given any definition. What’s passed off as irony is more bad luck or poor dramatic writing.
The Oxford English dictionary shows both meanings as correct!
How ironic is that?
x for the teacher x
headwaves… when I made that video I was being a bit of a purist.. and we call know that words change their meaning over time… and through misuse.. the meaning of ironic is changing as well… which sucks.. but oh well
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27793459/?GT1=43001
They told me about the misuse of “ironic” in like 6th grade or something, and I have never been able to keep it straight. Frankly, I still think I will not be able to keep it straight because I am not old, lazy, and set in my ways.
But if I were younger, I would remember it always because Marina is so acute.
Like, an angle.
(No, I did not mean angel)
Although, she is sort of angelic too, in a twisted and mischievous sort of way.
But I babble.
Blither is a word too. Someone who I thought of as quite intelligent acted today as if I meant babble when I said blither. I totally meant blither. I mean, who hasn’t heard of a blithering idiot?
No comments from the peanut gallery.
*sigh*
not=now above.
Where’s the edit button???
The Welshman says, “There’s no such thing as a cute Angle.”
They way you describe the proper use of the word irony sounds very much like what most people call sarcasm. Could you explain the difference and how the irony became the new sarcasm?
Ok, i am confused.
Now i know the true meaning of irony.
Then what is sarcasm?
Is that just an upgraded version of irony?
wait. is irony just for unfortunate things?
like” oh great ” when the man’s
wife said ” honey i crashed the car. ”
soo… is irony just for bad things?
and sarcasm for better things?
kind of like the opposite?
idk may i request the word Sarcasm. like the origin of it please
Finally someone teaching the American people about irony!
I was watching 2 and a half guy, and the fat lil kid ends some sentence with “ironic, huh?” and I was totally confused.
Basically you guys just have no idea what Irony and Sarcasm means… Learn2Speak!
Here is a great analysis of the ironic issue in the song Ironic from wikipedia.com:
The song’s usage of the word “ironic” attracted attention for what many feel is an improper application of the term. Some situations that Morissette describes in the song are arguably examples of cosmic irony: events that, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, appear “as if in mockery of the fitness or rightness of things”, such as “a death row pardon/two minutes too late”. Others appear to be merely unfortunate (not even improbable or coincidental), such as “a black fly/in your Chardonnay” or “A traffic jam/when you’re already late.” If one discounts cosmic irony, however, it is arguable that the song is ironic in and of itself – there is a fundamental incongruity in a song titled “Ironic” which ultimately contains no irony, an interpretation that Morissette herself has supported.
An analysis of the ironic lack of irony in “Ironic” by Irish comedian Ed Byrne includes:
“There’s nothing ironic about being stuck in a traffic jam when you’re late for something. Unless you’re a town planner. If you were a town planner and you were on your way to a seminar of town planners at which you were giving a talk on how you solved the problem of traffic congestion in your area, couldn’t get to it because you were stuck in a traffic jam, that’d be well ironic.”
“Rain on your wedding day is ironic only if marrying a weatherman and he set the date.”
“A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break, that’s inconsiderate office management. A no-smoking sign in a cigarette factory – irony.”
“Ten thousand spoons? How big is your sink, Alanis? What do you need this knife for – to stab the bloke who keeps leaving spoons all over your house?”
The song and video were discussed at length in VH1’s I Love the ’90s. Mo Rocca commented in the broadcast, “Irony is the disparity between what you expect will happen and what does happen. So raining on your wedding day isn’t ironic; it’s just crappy. It would have been ironic if she had lived in a place like Seattle and traveled to the desert of Mexico for a wedding, and it ended up raining there, but not in Seattle. Alanis always gets the last laugh though. We all sit here, saying her song isn’t ironic, but in fact, that’s pretty ironic that she wrote a song called ‘Ironic’ that wasn’t really ironic. Those Canadians are pretty crafty.”
“Ironic” was parodied in an MTV television commercial featuring Donal Logue as a cab-driver with his quadruplicate counterparts spouting similarly un-ironic ideas. (One sample: “It’s like meeting the girl of your dreams and finding out she’s five.”)
The video clip of “Ironic” is mentioned in the novel “Naiv Super” of Norwegian writer Erlend Loe.
Morissette herself does in fact acknowledge that “Ironic” is not filled with ironies and this in itself is what makes it ironic. Additionally, she confirms that she is a self-dubbed “malapropism queen” and that the song was lighthearted and not taken too seriously at the time it was written.
“ “For me the great debate on whether what I was saying in ‘Ironic’ was ironic wasn’t a traumatic debate. I’d always embraced the fact that every once in a while I’d be the malapropism queen. And when Glen and I were writing it, we definitely were not doggedly making sure that everything was technically ironic. It’s a testament to the fact that we didn’t think it was going to be put under the microscope by 30 million people. For me the sweetest moment came in New York when a woman came up to me in a record store and said, ‘So all those things in the ‘Ironic’ aren’t ironic.’ And then she said, ‘And that’s the irony.” I said, ‘Yup.’ To me it’s a real snapshot of a nineteen-year-old’s definition and version of how life worked at the time. All that ‘Ironic’ touches on spawned all my future inquiries into and current understandings of the mysteries of life.”
I really like this one. ITs basicly simple and told me something that I really had no idea about.
Thanks