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An oxymoron is "a phrase that combines two words that seem to be the opposite of each other, for example a 'deafening silence'." (Oxford Dictionaries)

An oxymoron is a compressed paradox. It is a figure of speech where a writer combines seemingly contradictory terms. You may have noticed that I used one in this blog post title.

Here are 10 frequently-used oxymorons:

 1. Awfully pretty
 2. Clearly misunderstood
 3. Foolish wisdom
 4. Larger half
 5. Minor miracle
 6. Only choice
 7. Poor health
 8. Seriously funny
 9. Small crowd
10. Unbiased opinion

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The word oxymoron comes from the Greek for pointedly foolish: 'oxys' means sharp or keen and 'moros' means foolish.

Richard Watson Todd shows us how easily we accept oxymorons as part of everyday speech in this paragraph from Much Ado About English. There are 10 in this example:

It was an open secret that the company had used a paid volunteer to test the plastic glasses. Although they were made using liquid gas technology and were an original copy that looked almost exactly like a more expensive brand, the volunteer thought that they were pretty ugly and that it would be simply impossible for the general public to accept them. On hearing this feedback, the company board was clearly confused and there was a deafening silence. This was a minor crisis and the only choice was to drop the product line.

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