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
   • For Theodor Adorno and his colleagues at the Frankfurt School who coined the term, "culture industry" was an oxymoron, intended to set up a critical contrast between the exploitative, repetitive mode of industrial mass production under capitalism and the associations of transformative power and...1996, John Sinclair, “Culture and Trade: Some Theoretical and Practical Considerations”, in Emile G. McAnany, Kenton T. Wilkinson, editors, Mass Media and Free Trade: NAFTA and the Cultural...
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
   • “Stable inflation is an oxymoron because it means it’s not stable,” Shelton told CNN in a recent interview.2024 October 31, Matt Egan, “Trump’s former pick to join the Federal Reserve has proposed a radical solution to solve inflation”, in CNN