Every year I encounter this and search it up and am left with no answers. Pls explain
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I always liked the example “friendly fire” for an oxymoron. It’s quite obvious on 2 levels that fire isn’t inherently friendly, and being shot by your own side isn’t exactly friendly either. It’s a weird term.
An oxymoron is often a short phrase, as few as 2 words, which on a surface meaning appears to be two opposite words nailed together. “Growing smaller” is another one. If you look at the individual words “growing” and “smaller” they seem opposites, and yet we know what it means, it’s an idiom, not the literal meaning of the words themselves, but a bigger concept we are using strange words to describe because we can’t find better ones, or someone else came up with something we all seem to understand. Maybe it should more logically be “shrinking smaller” instead? But we are so used to “growing smaller” that it feels right. And language is rarely based on logic.
A paradox can be anything which doesn’t logically add up.
A paradox:
“The sentence below is true”
“The sentence above is false”
Try working those through logically – you can’t get anywhere, you just end up going full circle and re-stating the same concepts. It’s not a funny word-thing like an oxymoron at all, it’s a logic thing and is often much longer.
An oxymoron can SEEM a bit paradoxical, because it’s using opposites for its effect, but it’s not the same thing.
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