And that it's not a synonym for coincidence? Watching the EPL announcers on FSW, it gets really, really tiresome for them to cite some coincidence as irony, like when they said it was ironic that Bryan Robson was managing against Middlesbrough. Ugghh!! Is this a failing of just announcers, or the population as a whole?
It is incredibly annoying. Tildsley is the worst for it though, he think absolutely everything is ironic. "How ironic that Rooney scored against Fenerbahce because his dad's mate Ken once went to Turkey on a holiday and caught an STD" is the sort of thing you now expect him to come out with.
Like that song 'Ironic' written by Alanis Morrisette and an American co-writer, didn't actually have a single example of irony in it. 'Like rain on your wedding day.' That's not ironic, that's unfortunate. What would've been ironic is if you're a Weatherman and it rains on your wedding day. And Clive Tyldesley is an arsehole.
Actually, I think you might be in the wrong here. Irony has two meanings: 1) The expression of one's meaning by using words of the opposite meaning in order to make one's remarks forceful 2) (Of an occurrence) the quality of being so unexpected or ill-timed that it appears to be deliberately perverse. Does the visit of Middlesbrough to West Brom for Robson's first game qualify as 'appearing deliberately perverse'? Perhaps in some people’s minds. Even if you don't agree that it does qualify as ironic under the second meaning, it seems to me that the commentator is just exaggerating, not actually abusing language.
An American questioning the british grasp of irony... oh the irony!. Well done sir. Thats made my day
"Its like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife, well isn't it ironic" No Alanis, that just fookin annoying!
You beat me to it. Good stuff. Yeah, "a free ride...when you already paid"...I think is just getting hoodwinked as opposed to ironic.
Dear Superdave. Yes, Alanis is Canadian. I know this. And I also happen to know that she was living in LA when this song was written, and had been for a few years. Also, I inserted a 'Get Out Of Jail' clause in my opening paragraph, by stating that she co-wrote it with an American. This was wrong. She co-wrote it with 3 Americans. 'It's like being in a traffic jam when you're already late.' Again, merely unfortunate. Now, if it was a city planner stuck in traffic when they're already late, how we'd laugh! Before dragging them out of their car and beating them like a gong!
Maybe the Dish. He did, after all, run away with the Spoon. The Bastard. Eyewitnesses said it was after the cow jumped over the moon.
i would contend, if, in fact, irony can be described as the incongruity between the actual results of a sequence of events and the expected results of those events, that having one day's winning of the lottery succeeded not by the following day's euphoria and anticipated spending of said windfall, but, rather, by one's own death, could, quite accurately, be described as 'ironic'.
So, would winning the Lottery the day after your death, when you needed the money to pay for a life-saving operation a few days before be ironic or unfortunate? A tobacco executive dying of cancer ironic?
I like cheese, how ironic!!! MY favorite food is cheese yet I hate cows, I just want to kill them and grill them, the IRONY!!! HAHAHA! Ok I just had to get some of the stupid out of me...
by my understanding of the definitions of 'irony' -- which are 1) the incongruities described in my last post and 2) the misuse of words to describe the opposite of what one intended -- the situations that you have described would be merely coincidences, and not technically 'ironic'. unless, of course, one expects tobacco executives to be impervious to cancer (which would be foolish), or if one had anticipated winning the lottery (which would be miraculously prescient) and using it's award to finance said operation. then you would be dealing with genuine irony. i don't know who originated the theory that morrisette's song contains no examples of irony (though every time the song comes on, someone always claims it), but there are quite a few examples of irony within it. for example, it may have to be implied that one envisions one's wedding day to be perfect; but once one accepts that implication, 'rain on your wedding day' most assuredly qualifies as ironic. don't you think?
while I was at my previous job, they had three goes at trying to create a "get it right first time" culture within the company. They didn't see the irony. No. In that definition 'ironic' is just another word for unexpected. There's more to it than that. it's only ironic if there's a link between the two events which would make you think they are things that wouldn't happen given the link between them. Having it rain on your wedding day isn't in itself ironic, even if you imagine it to be perfect. There would have to be some condition attached to it which would make you think raining would be especially unlikely. e.g..... Having it rain on your wedding day after deciding to hold the wedding in Jamaica to be somewhere sunny, is a touch ironic, especially if it's sunny in your home town on the same day. The only irony with that song is the fact that it's about irony but doesn't contain a single ironic event.
I think it would be ironic if it rained on your wedding day, after you planned to have it in the desert. Or, perhaps, if chick marries guy in order for him to get credit in order to save his farm, which is going under because of a drought. That would be hella ironic.
As tobacco executives spent years denying a link between smoking and cancer, very possibly ironic. I'd just call it justice.