IRONY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does irony mean? 

• IRONY (noun)
  The noun IRONY has 3 senses:

1. witty language used to convey insults or scorn

2. incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs

3. a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs

  Familiarity information: IRONY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IRONY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Witty language used to convey insults or scorn

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

caustic remark; irony; sarcasm; satire

Context example:

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own

Hypernyms ("irony" is a kind of...):

humor; humour; wit; witticism; wittiness (a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter)

Attribute:

sarcastic (expressing or expressive of ridicule that wounds)

unsarcastic (not sarcastic)

Derivation:

ironic; ironical (humorously sarcastic or mocking)

ironist (a humorist who uses ridicule and irony and sarcasm)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Context example:

the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated

Hypernyms ("irony" is a kind of...):

incongruity; incongruousness (the quality of disagreeing; being unsuitable and inappropriate)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "irony"):

Socratic irony (admission of your own ignorance and willingness to learn while exposing someone's inconsistencies by close questioning)

Derivation:

ironic; ironical (characterized by often poignant difference or incongruity between what is expected and what actually is)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("irony" is a kind of...):

figure; figure of speech; image; trope (language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense)

Meronyms (parts of "irony"):

antiphrasis (the use of a word in a sense opposite to its normal sense (especially in irony))

Domain member usage:

pretty ((used ironically) unexpectedly bad)

deserving; worth ((often used ironically) worthy of being treated in a particular way)

indeed ((used as an interjection) an expression of surprise or skepticism or irony etc.)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "irony"):

dramatic irony ((theater) irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play)

Derivation:

ironic; ironical (characterized by often poignant difference or incongruity between what is expected and what actually is)

 Context examples 

There was a delicious irony in the offer, in the courtliness of giving preference on such a ghastly occasion.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

For your very great politeness, I am sure, said Miss Murdstone; with an irony which no more affected my aunt, than it discomposed the cannon I had slept by at Chatham.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

As he answered me his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different tone:—Oh, it was the grim irony of it all—this so lovely lady garlanded with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered if she were truly dead; she laid in that so fine marble house in that lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the mother who loved her, and whom she loved; and that sacred bell going 'Toll! toll! toll!' so sad and slow; and those holy men, with the white garments of the angel, pretending to read books, and yet all the time their eyes never on the page; and all of us with the bowed head.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)