“Dream Job”
Here’s another one:
Reanimated zombie.
Wikipedia is your friend! Seriously, take a look at that article. It has a LOT of examples of “real” oxymorons. Among my favorites from there: bittersweet, guest host, open secret, sounds of silence
Minsc would argue (most violently) with your assertion, citing his beloved Boo the miniature giant space hamster as a counter-argument. But I guess you could argue that SANE people wouldn’t use “miniature giant” or “giant midget”. Or non-fictional people.
From Wiley’s Dictionary in “B.C.”:
humidifier - hyoo-mid-uh-fahy-er - an Italian oxymoron.
I knew an Australian to whom the phrase was indeed an oxymoron since their word for shrimp is prawn. Until she discovered, living for a year in the US (New Orleans, no less) that “shrimp” meant “prawn”.
I’m actually a little surprised that an Australian wouldn’t know the seafood meaning of shrimp. I understand that “prawn” is mostly used, but don’t they refer to small prawns as “shrimp”? This Australian website seems to think so.
Three-in-one, the US Army’s MRE: Meal-Ready to-Eat.
I believe that in Baldur’s Gate you can get a conversation with Elminster who says something along the lines of how Boo is in fact a Giant Space Hamster… who had a shrinking spell cast on him. In that way “miniature giant” makes sense, because fundamentally it is the species “Giant Space Hamster”, but was altered to be miniaturized. One would presume that “giant space hamsters” have defining species characteristics apart from merely being larger than normal hamsters from space that Boo would have inherited.
(Though, regardless of any justification given in or out of universe, the name was clearly intended to make people laugh because of the apparent contradiction in terms).
Good grief! Another living dead thread!
Probably the most important part of that article:
And this misuse would never have happened if the term itself–being a rhetorical term from poetics–didn’t sound esoteric.
In other words, the people who perpetuate these tired lists think they sound smart by using the “big” word; they probably wouldn’t be feeling so clever and amusing by sending chain emails with the typical George Carlin inspired list if they couldn’t also use the word oxymoron in the process–however incorrectly they use it.
“Jumbo shrimp” is an oxymoron that is in common use and was before Carlin. He may have brought it to our attention that it was contradictory.
“Living in Philadelphia” is an oxymoron that is constructed only for a joke.
“Bittersweet” is not an oxymoron since sweet and bitter are two different tastes that can be experienced at the same time just as sweet and salty can be.
(Wiki is a friend only to help you get started researching something. It is not reliable.)
Yes, that’s why “jumbo shrimp” is an oxymoron. Like tall dwarf.
OK, then it’s not any different than in American English, which is why I was confused.
American English is itself an oxymoron. “Jumbo Prawn” is not.
… that’s not an oxymoron. Just not very descriptive (I assume that’s what you’re getting at).
I have no idea what we’re on about, then.
Never mind, I figured it out. It’s even more a “true” oxymoron in Australian English.
I don’t think the folks in 2000 were too likely to check Wikipedia.
But it’s not contradictory in the slightest. “Large shellfish” is not a oxymoron, so “jumbo shrimp” – which means exactly the same thing.
Yes, “shrimp” can mean “a small person,” but “jumbo shrimp” always applies to the crustacean and nothing else.
Carlin (or whoever originally said it) was making a pun (or, I suppose, a malapropism) on the two definitions, but the example was meant as a joke and is still a joke – i.e., not something to be taken seriously as a definition.