OmManiPadmeOmelet wrote:
> In article .com>,
> "sf" > wrote:
>
> > Damsel in dis Dress wrote:
> > > Maybe
> > > I'll make Nancy Young's stuffed pepperoncini for the cook-in (if it
> > > actually happens) and take pictures. No, videos.
> > >
> >
> > I just noticed that "video" just bumped "groups" off the front page of
> > Google tonight.
>
> <shrugs> I just go to http://www.googlegroups.com and I don't have to
> worry about it.
>
> I sometimes read the groups at work, but rarely, if ever, post from
> there.
> --
> Peace!
> Om
>
> [[[-"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a Son of a bitch"
> -- Jack Nicholson-]]]




I Had to look-up Irony
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"Ironic" redirects here. For the song by Alanis Morissette, see
Ironic (song).

Irony is best known as a figure of speech (more precisely called verbal
irony) in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or
a writer says, and what is understood. It can also be considered a
twist of fate where an eventual occurrence relates back to a particular
quote. All the different senses of irony, however, revolve around the
notion of incongruity, or a gap between our understanding and what
actually happens. For instance, tragic irony occurs when a character
onstage is ignorant, but the audience watching knows his or her
eventual fate, as in Sophocles' play Oedipus the King. Socratic
irony, the oldest form, takes place when someone pretends to be foolish
or ignorant, but is not. Cosmic irony is a sharp incongruity between
our expectations of things and what actually occurs, as if the universe
were mocking us.

H. W. Fowler, in Modern English Usage, had this to say of irony:

Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience,
consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not
understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the
ear, is aware, both of that "more" and of the outsider's
incomprehension.

Irony has some of its foundation in the onlooker's perception of
paradox. In June 2005, the State of Virginia Employment Agency, which
handles unemployment compensation, announced that they would lay off
400 employees for lack of work because unemployment is so low in the
state. The reader's perception of a disconnection between common
expectation, and the application of logic with an unexpected outcome,
both has an element of irony in it and shows the connection between
irony and humor, when the surprise startles us into laughter. Not all
irony is humorous: "grim irony" and "stark irony" are familiar.