# Whence the burning irony? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 13, 2008, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157 "2008-04-13T14:26:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jacquilynne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/67e7ee/32.png) [@jacquilynne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacquilynne)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2008, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/1 "2008-04-13T14:26:48Z")
One of my favorite turns of phrase is ‘the irony, it burns’. But I realized this morning that I don’t know where it comes from. It seems like a pop culture reference, but googling it reveals so many uses of it in the wild that I can’t figure out where it started. So, is there a movie or something that’s the first source, or at least major popularizer of the phrase? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2008, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/2 "2008-04-13T14:31:05Z")
I would guess it derives from **The Simpson’s** quote, “The goggles, they do nothing.” Since the goggles in the originally were meant to keep acid from the eyes, the burning link seems to be set up. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2008, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/3 "2008-04-13T14:49:02Z")
For me, its a reference to Lord of the Rings – when Frodo and Sam tie Gollum up with the elven rope, he starts to scream “it burns us!!” ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/4 "2008-04-14T03:56:08Z")
Sideways to the OP, my favorite is from Trevanian. “To be used effectively, sarcasm should etch a phase, not drip from every word.” ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/5 "2008-04-14T11:39:30Z")
I always assumed it referred to ironing - if you use a hot iron too hard, whatever you’re ironing will start to burn! Similarly, ‘the irony, it burns’ would refer to a heavy-handed use of it. ---
**Author:** ![Myglaren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Myglaren](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myglaren)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/6 "2008-04-14T12:09:51Z")
Or in our case, “The ironing, it burns” when someone is too busy gabbing to pay attention to what they are doing. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/7 "2008-04-14T12:25:35Z")
Or, it is the introduction given before Jeremy Irons reads selected works by Scotland’s [Ploughman Poet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns). ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/8 "2008-04-14T12:50:58Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] I would guess it derives from **The Simpson’s** quote, “The goggles, they do nothing.” Since the goggles in the originally were meant to keep acid from the eyes, the burning link seems to be set up. [/QUOTE] Heh, no offense, but thats a hell of a stretch. That said, The Simpson’s does seem a likely source (as it’s basically the source of half of the internets cliche phrases, “welcoming our alien overlords”, etc). I searched [The Simpson’s archive](http://www.snpp.com/episodes/AABF20) for the phrase (complicated, rather annoyingly, by the fact that there’s a simpson character named “Burns”) and while the full phrase doesn’t appear to occur, the phrase “it burns!” gets used several times in different episodes. I’m guessing someone on Fark or Slashdot used the Simpsons quote to refer to irony and the phrase stuck. Out of curiously, is there a way to search Slashdot for phrases in comments in _reverse_ chronological order so that their earliest use is shown first. It seems to me that would be the ultimate resource in settling these “where did this internet meme come from” debates, but alas I can only figure out how to search so that the latest instance is displayed first, and flipping through the gajillion results that results from common phrases like “the irony…” to get to the first occurance isn’t really practical. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/9 "2008-04-14T17:49:40Z")
I always figured it was based on the old cliche about movie vampires being exposed to the sun. ---
**Author:** ![JustThinkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@JustThinkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustThinkin)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2008, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whence-the-burning-irony/445157/10 "2008-04-14T22:44:57Z")
Huh. And all this time I thought it was a SDMB original. Guess I need to get out more often. Or. . . um . . . wait.