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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A lot of people here miss the mark for genuine, common irony. Sarcasm can be used as irony and can have ironic moments, but it’s not the main or general use. It’s hard to put in words, but with examples it makes sense. Bo Burnham has an entire song about ironic moments.
A water park has burnt to the ground – water is used to put out fires, so a place full of water being on fire is ironic – it’s contrary to what you’d expect.
A tow truck breaking down – Tow trucks are used to help cars who have broken down. If the truck itself breaks down, that’s ironic as it’s meant to be the solution, and not the problem.
And Monopoly has far from a stranglehold on the board game market – Monopoly means “to own all / the majority”, so a game being called monopoly not having anywhere close to owning all or the majority of board games sales is ironic, the name goes against the meaning.
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