Word.ws English Dictionary

oxymora

oxymora is the plural of oxymoron.

Meaning of oxymoron

Noun

oxymoron (plural oxymorons or oxymora)

  1. (rhetoric) A figure of speech in which two words or phrases with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect.
    • In Oxymoron jarring phrases join
      And terms opposed in harmony combine.1835, L[arret] Langley, “[Rhetorical Figures.] Oxymoron.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 35
  2. (broadly, proscribed, sometimes) A contradiction in terms.
    • During the past few years, some 200 class-action suits have been filed against food manufacturers, charging them with misuse of the adjective in marketing such edible oxymorons as “natural” Cheetos Puffs, “all-natural” Sun Chips, “all-natural” Naked Juice, “100 percent all-natural” Tyson chicken...2015 April 28, Michael Pollan, “Why ‘Natural’ Doesn’t Mean Anything Anymore”, in The New York Times Magazine

Questions about oxymora

What is oxymora the plural of?
Oxymora is the plural of oxymoron.

Words near oxymora in the dictionary

  1. oxymethylene
  2. oxymetric
  3. oxymetry
  4. oxymonad
  5. oxymonads
  6. oxymora
  7. oxymoron
  8. oxymoronic
  9. oxymoronically
  10. oxymoronicity
  11. oxymoronicness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oxymora (page history and authors); oxymoron (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “oxymora.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oxymora. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.