An oxymoron is a contradictory sentence, often with multiple meanings. Examples include “vegetarian meatballs,” “bird dog,” and “pretty bad.”
An oxymoron is a sentence in which the parts are contradictory or incongruous in different ways. Often, at least one of the words in an oxymoron is not used literally or has multiple meanings, or there is some shorthand, and the apparent contradiction arises from this. To understand more about what an oxymoron is, let’s look at some examples.
Oxymoron figurative meaning.
Vegetarian meatballs. There are dozens of vegetarian meatball recipes available on the Internet, despite the fact that anything deserving of the name meatball cannot, by definition, be labeled vegetarian. The word meatball is used to evoke the shape, flavor and role of food in various recipes, and what is really meant is something like “a vegetarian version of a meatball”. However, it’s effective to just say the two words, and if you think about the second one in quotes, a vegetarian “meatball,” meaning it’s just a so-called meatball, works.
Shorthand oxymoron.
Half bigger. The halves must, by definition, be exactly the same. To say that one half is bigger than the other is an oxymoron because it means they can’t be halves. What is meant is something like “the larger of what should be, or was meant to be, two equal pieces”.
Bird dog. A dog is a type of creature. One bird is another. An animal cannot be a bird and a mammal called a dog at the same time, so this is an oxymoron. What is meant is “a dog that effectively hunts birds”.
Double meaning oxymoron.
Giant prawns. Shrimp is the name of a marine creature. It’s also a size designation for something very minute. Therefore, when it is juxtaposed with the word that is in many schemes – eggs and black olives, for example – used for the largest size, jumbo, we are simultaneously aware of both meanings and an oxymoron results.
Pretty bad. Beautiful means attractive. It is also used as an intensifier to mean a moderately large amount, as in “He’s quite hungry/tired/excited, etc.” When used in the second sense, but juxtaposed with a word that contradicts the first sense, we are aware of both senses at the same time and an oxymoron results. Terribly pretty is the same thing in reverse.
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