I’ve always avoided using the word ‘ironic’ because I’m worried about using it incorrectly. I was listening to ‘Ironic’ by Alanis Morrisette and remembered she had been called out for not understanding what ironic meant. I find most explanations to be confusing and so I figured I’d ask here.
In: Other
Something is ironic when it is not just unexpected, but specifically and amusingly contrary to what is expected. Not just “I didn’t expect that” but “I expected precisely the opposite of that and it happened anyway, despite actions taken to prevent it and probably *because* of those actions.”
For a *wrong* example, when Alanis Morrisette sings about rain on a wedding day – there is no particular reason to believe that it should or should not rain on any given day. Even if the forecast does not show rain, it would not be unexpected *per se* that the forecast is wrong since this happens fairly regularly. The fact that it’s your wedding day does not make rain unlikely, just unwanted. As Bender puts it, [that’s not ironic, it’s just coincidental](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T0aJnJU7-c).
An example of irony on your wedding day would be if you planned an indoor ceremony specifically because you did not want to take the chance for rain, and then a pipe burst in the ceiling and “rained” water down on your ceremony even though it was sunny and not raining outside. This would be ironic because you expected it to possibly rain *outside* and planned to avoid it by being inside where rain can’t happen, but something unexpected happened that caused it to “rain” anyway while it would have been better to hold the ceremony outside in the first place. Not only that, but your own actions to avoid the rain *caused* you to experience “rain” on your wedding day.
Similarly, while a plane crash is always unexpected, it isn’t unexpected that it would happen specifically when one passenger happens to be flying for the first time and is afraid to fly. Quite the opposite – he *definitely* expected it, since he’s been afraid to fly his whole damn life. The plane crash was unexpected and him flying was unexpected, and they just happened to coincide on the same flight.
A tragic example of real life irony is the crashes of the Boeing 737-MAX8 due to a feature that was added specifically to prevent the planes from stalling and therefore crashing – it was added to prevent the plane nose from rising up due to the unconventional configuration of the engines. Instead, a faulty sensor caused the plane to believe it was about to stall so the safety feature directed the nose *down* when it shouldn’t have, causing the planes to plummet directly into the ground. It’s unexpected that a feature specifically added to improve the safety of the aircraft was the very thing that made the planes unsafe.
My favorite example of irony is getting hit in the head by a falling safety helmet. The safety helmet is supposed to protect your head but in this case it’s doing the opposite.
Hoo boy.
Okay, so, it really kind of depends on who you ask as to whether the situations described by Alanis Morrisette are or are not ironic, because there is some wiggle-room in the definitions and how they’re used.
In general, irony is a situation where what you see, hear, read, or intuit are different from the reality of the situation.
Depending on who you ask, there are 3 or 4 different main types of irony. Sometimes the last two are rolled into one, but I think there’s enough of a difference between them to split them up.
1) **Verbal Irony**: Verbal irony is for when a person (or a character) says something that implies the opposite of what the words they’re saying mean in a vacuum. This is sometimes confused/conflated with sarcasm; the difference is that sarcasm is generally mean and snide. A few examples of verbal irony:
* If you look out the window and see clouds and rain, and say “What a beautiful day outside!”
* Your friend runs to the bus stop just barely making it and as you get on the bus with him you say “Aah, on time as always” with a smile
* Your friends ask you about a politician that they know you hate, and you say something like “Oh yeah, he makes great decisions.”
Something that would be classed as sarcasm rather than irony:
* A professional rival swoops in on a sale and you say something like “How nice of you to take the commission on the last 10 minutes of that 2 hour sale.” with the clear connotation/tone that you think he’s an asshole for doing that.
2) **Dramatic Irony** is a situation that exists solely in a fictional work, and is a situation where a character’s actions or words are opposed to what we know is the reality of the situation. Some examples that aren’t from any particular fiction:
* A character who has been shown to be selling out the heroes gives the main character a glass of water and the hero says “Thanks, you’re always such a great guy.”
* The hero is shown putting on a bulletproof vest in his suit-up montage, and in the climactic showdown the villain shoots him in the chest, which knocks the hero flat. The villain turns around and starts boasting about killing the hero.
* The protagonist’s wife is shown having an affair with another character; in a later scene the protagonist is talking with the other guy and says “You’re such a good friend, I know I can trust you when it counts.”
This is different from verbal irony because it relies on knowledge we have that the character speaking or acting does not have. For instance: if in the last example, there’s a scene in between where the protagonist discovers the affair, his statement would be verbal irony, since it’s not us knowing that he’s being played, but him “playing along” and making that statement knowing the irony of it.
3) **Situational Irony** is when a situation defies what logic would dictate to be the most obvious outcome. The best example I’ve heard of this is the idea of Jeff Bezos buying a lottery ticket and winning the jackpot of a million dollars; not only is the idea of such a rich man buying a lottery ticket kind of absurd, but the fact that he wins is just absurd and in a way, unfair (since it would be much more of a benefit to someone without hundreds of billions of dollars in money and assets). This also borders on…
4) **Cosmological Irony** This is situational irony taken to an extreme that makes you think “Someone involved in this pissed off a higher power” and is both tragic and entirely unlikely. This is the sort of irony that was often employed in the ancient Greek Tragedies; for the best example look at the case of the father of Oedipus in *Oedipus Rex* – Oedipus’ father, the king of a nation, visits an oracle who tells him that his son is destined to kill him, usurp his throne, and impregnate his queen (the boy’s own mother); the king, fearing this, has his son set to be executed as an infant. I don’t remember if it was the king or a servant who couldn’t do it, but whoever couldn’t bear to behead an infant instead pierced the Achilles tendons of his feet and bound them together so that he would starve or be eaten by wolves; however, the boy is found by a farmer, raised back to health, and he goes on to become a leader who conquers many states, including the one formerly belonging to his father, who he kills, and he then marries the queen, who is his own mother. Not only was this not the result you would expect from leaving an infant to die, but the very situation that the father was trying to avoid.
Most of the situations that Alanis Morisette refers to in “Ironic” are mild examples of situational irony. Key example being that “A free ride when you’ve already paid” is a similar situation to the above example of Jeff Bezos winning a million dollars.
In the Alanis Morrisette song, a man is afraid of flying and when he finally takes his first plane ride, it crashes.
This isn’t ironic because this is the expectation he is worried about.
It would be ironic if he decided to drive instead of fly and then he died in a car crash.
From my basic understanding its when something is expected to happen and the opposite happens, which in turn just makes you laugh.
The ironic song took that opposite thing and made it a literal interpretation of opposites.
The other day my son came home from school and told me at lunch he asked to join in a game of soccer, the boy who’s ball they were using said yes. … but another boy who doesn’t like him said no, therefore he had to respect that boys dislike for him … no matter what the rest of the kids thought. .. straight after lunch they had health as a subject and the lesson being taught was inclusivity. My son was laughing while telling me this because he was just actively left out at lunch, discluded from the game. The irony was not lost on him.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep.
**Ironic.**
He could save others from death, but not himself.
The simplest way to describe irony is when someone tells a story where one outcome is expected, but the opposite happens instead. My favorite example of irony is the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the wise. Have you heard it before? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. It’s ironic he could save others from death, but not himself.
Having to miss school on the day you were to receive an award for “Perfect Attendance.”
A black man having the last name White.
Two friends fighting over a friendship bracelet.
A fire alarm factory being destroyed by a fire.
Iron man wearing wrinkled clothes.
So, there are two ways to think about language. The first is prescriptivism. This involves a central authority (like your teacher) telling you the what the word means. “Irony is where the elevator at the elevator school is broken AND the cause was the teacher of the elevator school showing the class what a working elevator looks like.”
The second way to think about language is and mean is defined by everyone and as long as we all understand each other that’s what the word means. (This is actually how the English language works) for irony we have a massively popular and well known song that has been brought up over and over again, Ironic, none of the sentences in the song were ironic at the time of recording. but now, they are because lots of people think they are. The same thing happened with the word literally which literally means figuratively (these two words are opposite to each other and yet mean the same thing in certain cases) honestly the first definition of irony is exhausting. The second on the other hand,, is real easy to understand. So, the later caught on very quickly.
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