what does irony mean?

Answer 1

The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect.

Language device in which the real intent is concealed or contradicted by the literal meaning of words or a situation. Verbal irony, either spoken or written, arises from an awareness of contrast between what is and what ought to be. Dramatic irony, an incongruity in a theatrical work between what is expected and what occurs, depends on the structure of a play rather than its use of words, and it is often created by the audience's awareness of a fate in store for the characters that they themselves do not suspect.

Answer 2

Let's get one thing straight... Irony does not mean sarcasm. They are similar but different. so don't listen to Carol. Sarcasm eg: Bob says: I am going to be an astronaut one day. Fred replies: (mockingly) Yeah and I am going to be the King of England.

Irony example. A paramedic has an accident on the way to saving someone from an accident; or, someone accuses another of being immature, yet does so in an immature way.

Sarcasm is usually intended to be insulting, or is used as mockery. Irony is not.

Answer 3

Irony is a literary or rhetorical device in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says, and what is generally understood (either at the time, or in the later context of history). Irony may also arise from a discordance between acts and results, especially if it is striking, and known to a later audience. A certain kind of irony may result from the act of pursuing a desired outcome, resulting in the opposite effect, but again, only if this is known to a third party. In this case the aesthetic arises from the realization that an effort is sharply at odds with an outcome, and that in fact the very effort has been its own undoing.

More generally, irony is understood as an aesthetic valuation by an audience, which relies on a sharp discordance between the real and the ideal, and which is variously applied to texts, speech, events, acts, and even fashion. All the different senses of irony revolve around the perceived notion of an incongruity, or a gap, between an understanding of reality, or expectation of a reality, and what actually happens.

Answer 4

There are several types of irony. Verbal irony is when you say something other than what you really mean [not lying] Situational is when you expect something to happen, that doesn't. Or in plays, when the audience knows something that the character doesn't.

Answer 5

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RE:
what does irony mean?

Answer 6

Irony is when something comes out the way no one expected it to. For Example, O.J. Simpson going to church. haha.

Answer 7

Just a side note: The adjectival form of "irony" -- ironic is totally overused and misused these days.

Answer 8

irony would be like a man who goes around and teaches kids at a school to stop, drop, and roll in case of a fire, dies in a fire....

Answer 9

It is something that you do believe in and then it turns out the opposite...Also it means sarcasm.