This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 1407, an awfully good episode about oxymorons in English.
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Have you ever heard natives say almost exactly or same difference?
Today we dive into the topic of oxymorons and how you can use your understanding of this to elevate your commentary and connection in English.
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Hey Lindsay, how's it going?
Hey Michelle, doing well.
Happy to be here.
How about you?
What's going on?
Same.
Yeah.
Everything's good.
I've been getting out a little bit more lately, so that's good.
Enjoying the weather, going to the park, all that good stuff.
Good.
I'm glad to hear that.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, Lindsay, I'm excited about today's episode because it's so much fun.
Yeah.
I recently had a student ask me about what an oxymoron is.
So oxymoron, this is such a fun topic.
It's fun to think about.
It's fun to talk about it.
So we're going to talk about oxymorons today, and we'll give you some really fun ones to use and think about.
Yeah, I love this.
I think about these a lot, just on the street, just walking around, just thinking about language.
I don't know, kind of a language nerd.
And sometimes I think people do use these and we don't realize that they're oxymorons.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
That's what's so much fun about it.
And sometimes people say things are an oxymoron, like as a joke or...
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So we're going to talk about oxymorons today and we'll tell you what they are in just a second.
But before we do that, Lindsay, what do we want to tell our listeners?
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All right, Michelle.
Yeah, oh, for sure.
I love that.
Okay, so go on over and get those.
All right, so let's get into it.
What is an oxymoron, Lindsay?
Okay, so it is a group of words. that are opposites.
I've heard it being called a contradiction in terms.
Like this idea of, yeah, they contradict and they form a new meaning, right?
But they contradict each other.
It's usually a short sentence, where each word in this sentence contradicts Right right right, right right.
And you know, some people will note this is what we were talking about a second ago that something is an oxymoron in conversations as a form to connect or find humor with someone.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so some things that aren't necessarily thought of as oxymorons, but you say it and you're like oh, that's an oxymoron.
Like, yeah, I'm trying to think of an example for that.
Maybe if you're kind of talking about someone and you say.
Oh, like Sarah was quiet today and somebody would say, quiet Sarah, that's an oxymoron.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Kind of making fun of someone, poking fun at them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like that.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So sometimes we use it in that way, but they're also just regular oxymorons.
Like Lindsay said, you don't necessarily realize that they are oxymorons, but they're good to know because they're a grouped meaning.
So I would actually argue that I think they're more like an idiom, because they're defined as a group definition rather than by each word itself.
Ah, I see.
Kind of like a chunk, you mean.
Right, right, right.
Okay.
Maybe it'll be easier if we let our listeners know what some examples are here, so they can really bite into this.
Yeah, let's do it.
Well, lucky for you, we have a ton of examples.
Okay.
Well, when doing my research on oxymorons, I chose a few that I thought were the most fun and interesting.
So let's go through them.
So Lindsay, what's the first one?
Okay, so this one I've been seeing a lot of lately, you know, this year in 2020, alone together.
And this was this a hashtag on Twitter?
Yeah, I think I think it's a big hashtag around with the pandemic and people staying home.
So I've just seen it everywhere alone together.
And it's actually an oxymoron.
Yeah, this has been interesting.
You know, this spring, how people did you feel that way?
Like you felt closer to the people in your life?
You know that maybe then before, even though you couldn't be with them, I kind of felt that in the beginning.
Yeah, I think I was talking to.
I mean, I think we did episodes about, might have talked about this, you know how, how you know I was actually speaking to friends more frequently than usual.
Yeah, even though I don't even live near them.
So I wouldn't have been seeing them anyway.
But for some reason, the pandemic really brought that out.
Yeah, yeah, I've experienced that too.
And some of that has continued.
Some of it has dropped off.
Like my niece was calling me every day for a every day.
She hasn't called me now in like three weeks.
I'm like where'd you go?
What happened?
Oh emory um, so yeah, it is.
It is kind of interesting because yeah, you're alone, so you're not with anybody, But then and together is, you're with people.
So alone together is an oxymoron.
But you know, by just this alone, together means we're by ourselves, but we're together in it like, in a more metaphorical sense, being together.
Yeah, and with this one, it's on purpose, right?
It's meant to be an oxymoron, right?
And there's other ones that you'll see, where maybe they don't intend to make it an oxymoron, but here I think they're trying to right.
Right, right, right, right, right.
And then there's bittersweet.
So that's combining bitter and sweet.
So we actually did.
I don't even know if that's technically.
I mean, it must be an oxymoron, even though it's one word.
Yeah, it is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's also a flavor that people genuinely use to communicate to.
Right.
For sure.
And we talked about this word on episode 1154, which is, are you happy, sad, or both?
How to express a bittersweet feeling.
So definitely listen to that one.
Yeah, that's a good one.
That's all about, guys, helping you communicate these nuances of feeling.
We don't want you to just be able to say one kind of feeling.
It's not black and white.
Sometimes there's a lot of gray space in how you're feeling or how you're experiencing something.
So you want to be able to say that stuff.
Yeah.
For sure.
For sure.
Okay.
All right.
Now, these ones I'm really excited about.
These are fun.
Okay.
All right.
So, what's the first one?
This next one.
These are kind of funny, actually, when you look at it through this lens.
That's why I'm excited about this one.
So, original copy.
Right.
So that doesn't make any sense because if you're making a copy of it, it's not original.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
So but people say that like, can you save the original copy or can you send me the original copy?
Yeah.
Okay.
So if you wanted to get around this, you could say can you send me the original version?
I guess right of something.
Right.
Right.
Or you could just say, yeah, can you send me the original, right?
The original.
Yeah.
Right.
Because the original copy, it's kind of redundant in a way, actually.
Kind of.
Yeah.
It's so weird.
What about the next one?
The next one is awfully good.
Do you ever hear people say that?
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
It's funny because when they're put together, it makes sense.
Awfully just intensifies good.
But when you look at it separately, it is an oxymoron, right?
Right.
Right.
Awful and good.
Right.
Yeah.
But I mean, people do say this, guys.
So, even though it's an oxymoron, I recommend using these because you want to fully express yourself in English.
And these are natural things that people say, even if you like you wouldn't say to somebody oh, you shouldn't say original copy because it's an oxymoron.
On no no no, these are used.
Yeah, this episode is not about avoiding oxymorons, it's about knowing when you're using one and just having a little fun with it.
You know yeah, it can even be a conversation starter.
It's funny.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
And then the next one is old news, right?
So news by definition is why it's a contradiction in terms.
By definition, news is not old, it's new, Right.
I love it.
Yeah.
So, you could say something like, you didn't know that they broke up?
That's old news.
Yeah.
Good intonation, too.
I like that.
Well, oh, this one's good.
Pretty ugly, right?
So, again, you know, pretty.
We've done episodes on pretty as a way to say very, right, guys?
If you haven't listened to those episodes, come back to allersenglishcom and type pretty in the search bar.
Okay,
Mm-hmm.
But how is this an oxymoron?
Well, pretty is like beautiful and ugly is not.
But here it's not being used as like beautiful, ugly.
It's being used as, like Lindsay was saying, like pretty, in the sense of like, like very right.
Yeah, totally so.
The fight got pretty ugly.
Towards the end, they wouldn't stop insulting each other.
Right, got pretty ugly, like quite ugly right, yeah.
And this is used very frequently to say, oh things, it was pretty ugly for a while, but it's okay now, or something like that.
Pretty is used all the time as very well yeah oh, that's quite for sure.
I love this next one almost exactly.
Can you give us an example, michelle?
So that's almost exactly what i said, just a few ideas are a bit different.
Yeah again, nothing wrong with saying this.
It does make you sound very natural.
But just know that you're contradicting yourself and what you're saying.
That's the point.
Yeah.
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What else?
Right, right, right.
Okay.
I like this one a lot.
Plastic silverware.
Let's use plastic silverware for the party.
What's silverware?
So silverware is what you use to eat with.
It's like cutlery, but it usually is silver or metal.
Yeah, it's a metal.
Right.
And so we call it silverware.
So but it's not plastic.
So to say plastic silverware, it doesn't really make sense.
Right.
But the reason we say this is because silverware, just like Kleenex, right, that term has expanded out to mean a thing, not just a way it's made.
Like you know the whole example of Kleenex.
We say can I have a Kleenex instead of can I have a tissue?
The true term is tissue, but the brand is Kleenex, but it got into the mainstream.
Lucky brand, right?
That's funny.
I was just going to plan an episode about that.
That's so funny.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm going to have to remember to do that.
Yeah.
But yeah, I definitely love that.
Yeah.
There's a lot of things like that.
Okay.
But I won't say them all now because then it'll ruin it.
No, don't give it away for our listeners.
I'm not going to give it away.
Don't you worry, Lindsay.
So this is kind of in the same vein, right?
In the same.
It's not a brand, but it is like a, a material that originally, probably all silverware was made of silver right.
Probably original, originally.
And now we just use that to mean what we eat with.
Yeah.
Right, right, right.
Okay, awesome.
And we'll do one more for fun.
It's Same Difference.
Oh, my gosh.
This one's great.
I hear kids say this a lot a lot of times.
Do you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
Same difference.
It's like, oh, it's basically like saying the same.
It's the same thing but with the same difference.
This is one that i maybe might not say.
I feel like this one.
I would maybe advise against it because it i feel like it does kind of mark you as like, maybe younger or a little less educated.
What do you think?
Do you disagree with me?
And that's okay if you do?
No no, i know.
Um, i'm trying to think um same difference.
I mean i'm, I think that I would say it.
I don't know that I say it a lot, but it didn't register to me when I was making this list as something that's like oh, that's not something that people say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I may not say it personally a lot, but I see what you're saying about maybe it sounding like for a younger person, person like a kid or something like that.
I can see that being more frequently for them, but I don't think it's like a terrible thing to say.
Yeah, fair enough.
We'll stick with that.
So guys, use your own judgment.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
So these are really common, I think.
I mean, we hear them everywhere.
I like that.
Today Michelle, we've chosen some very common ones, you know, ones that we could have done more high level, and clever ones that you guys would never hear.
But these are ones you're going to hear all the time.
Oh, yeah, that's the point of this, guys.
You can actually use these, right?
And like I said, they can be a joke as well, like how we gave the example about Sarah.
Or I could say, oh, my daughter is such a calm baby.
And I could say, really?
That sounds like an oxymoron to me.
So in that case, it's not necessarily, but you are trying to say something.
You're trying to say that babies are never calm.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So I'm making a joke, a comment on that.
Yeah.
And I could say that I vaguely remember making a comment like this in my like native conversation in the last few months.
I don't remember what I said, but I remember making some kind of comment and saying that something wasn't oxymoron.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
You can take your understanding of this concept and make a statement about something.
Then we really get to a higher level of connection.
I love that.
Right, right.
So just saying, oh, that's an oxymoron or, you know, that shows a high level of commentary.
So that's great.
So guys, the takeaway for today is use these you know, listen for them and think is something, an oxymoron?
Is it something you should comment on?
We only could get to a few today, but there are so, so many.
We could do other episodes.
So um, you know, even think of what other oxymorons you hear, ask us about them or try using them um, but yeah yeah, and also get curious about english.
This is a way this would be a good brain habit.
You know what i mean to dig into words when you hear yourself saying them or you hear someone else saying them, dig into them and think about them.
That's going to immediately increase your fluency, because it's what's going on in your head when you're not actually speaking is kind of more what creates that fluency.
For sure.
For sure.
Oh, I love that, Lindsay.
Oh, my gosh.
So this is so much fun.
And they're very idiomatic.
Bring them up at parties.
And these make me laugh.
So definitely.
They're a good conversation starter.
And yeah, use it today.
Yeah.
And guys, I'm sure that we've used oxymorons in our conversations, in our 1300 episodes, 1400 that we've done so far.
So make sure you get those transcripts so you can find those oxymorons.
Let us know when we've used them, right?
So go to allairsenglish.com slash subscribe to get them in your email inbox every Monday morning.
Cool.
Okay.
This has been fun, Lindsay.
Thanks for chatting with me today.
All right.
Sounds good, Michelle.
Talk to you soon.
Bye.
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