Struggling to understand the difference between irony and unfortunate events. My partner is quite smart and I don’t want to make a fool of myself.
EDIT – Thanks everyone, your responses have really helped. Hopefully I’ll be less likely to make a fool of myself describing something as ironic, in the future.
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I’d say irony is just a particularly absurd coincidence.
Famously, the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morisette contains a lot of things that are just coincidences. “Rain on your wedding day”, for instance, is just bad luck. On any given day it sometimes rains, so it’s not especially absurd that it might rain on your wedding day.
However, let’s imagine you and your partner plan your wedding around making sure it won’t rain, so you book a spot in the middle of the desert where it only rains once every 100 years. Then, that 100-year rain comes on the day you’re there for your wedding.
That’s absurd. That feels “just too perfect”, in a roll-your-eyes sort of way. That’s irony.
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