Can anyone explain irony to me in plain english?

Question

And give me an example of irony.

For years I have always believed that I know what it means, but am not sure.

Answer 1

here are few examples
A situation immortalized in O. Henry's story The Gift of the Magi, in which a young couple is too poor to buy each other Christmas gifts. The man finally pawns his heirloom pocket watch to buy his wife a set of combs for her long, beautiful, prized hair. She, meanwhile, cuts off her treasured hair to sell it to a wig-maker for money to buy her husband a watch-chain. The irony is twofold: the couple, having parted with their tangible valuables, is caused by the act to discover the richness of the intangible.

When John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, all of his shots initially missed the President; however a bullet ricocheted off the bullet-proof windows of the Presidential limousine and struck Reagan in the chest. Thus, the windows made to protect the President from gunfire were partially responsible for his being shot.

A man goes over a giant waterfall e.g. Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives, only to take a cleanup shower where he slips on the soap and dies from trauma.

A person is run over by an Ambulance.

An anti-technology website.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor famous for his violence in film, campaigning against violence in video games in general - which ironically includes those featuring his own characters

Organic farming and health expert J.I. Rodale declared in a New York Times Magazine interview on June 4, 1971 that "I'm going to live to be 100, unless I'm run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver". The very next day he was a guest on The Dick Cavett Show and again spoke about his plans for a long life saying that "I never felt better in my life!" Later in the show, he appeared to fall asleep while another guest was speaking, only to be found dead of a heart attack.

Answer 2

Basically, if I say something and mean the opposite, that's an example of irony. For example: "Oh, I just love being woken up in the middle of the night by cats fighting!"

Sarcasm is almost always ironic, but not all irony is sarcastic. Sarcasm is basically irony that is intended to insult, wound or at least mock someone, like "Oh, well haven't you done a good job" (when they clearly haven't).

There's also what might be called irony of fate, when something has the opposite effect to the one you might have expected. For example, if you had an accident that left you feeling better and healthier than before the accident.

Just having rain on your wedding day, I'm afraid, doesn't really count. If it rained on your wedding day and everyone had a better time as a result, then that would count.

There are other kinds of irony (e.g. dramatic irony, where a playwright draws attention to something the audience knows, but the character doesn't), but this should be enough for now.

Hope that's helped.

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 seen by an outside audience. Irony is understood as an aesthetic evaluation 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.

There are different kinds of irony. For example:

Tragic (or dramatic) irony occurs when a character on stage or in a story is ignorant, but the audience watching knows his or her eventual fate, as in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet.
Socratic irony takes place when someone (classically a teacher) pretends to be foolish or ignorant, to expose the ignorance of another (and the teaching-audience, but not the student-victim, realizes the teacher's plot).
Cosmic irony is when a higher being or force interferes in a character's life, creating ironic settings.
H. W. Fowler, in Modern English Usage, says of irony:

Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders’ incomprehension.[1]
Irony threatens authoritative models of discourse by "removing the semantic security of ‘one signifier : one signified’";[2][3] irony has some of its foundation in the onlooker’s perception of paradox which arises from insoluble problems.

The connection between irony and humor is somewhat revealed when the surprise at what should have expected startles us into laughter. However, not all irony is humorous: “grim irony” and “stark irony” are familiar.

Answer 4

We all need to drop the Alanis Morisette song from our memories.

You asked for plain English, so I won't cut and paste anything either.

Irony is when THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS EXPECTED TAKES PLACE.

You'd EXPECT Jim Fixx to be physically fit because he was an "expert" on running, BUT he died prematurely of a heart attack.

When I say, "I love using pop songs to teach literary devices" In sarcasm, the EXPECTED meaning is that I do, BUT I actually mean I can't stand that process because I'm being sarcastic.

Try applying this way of thinking about it to things you know to be ironic, and you'll find it's the simplest and easiest to remember definition.

Answer 5

An example - it is ironic that Christopher Reeves, the man who played Superman, was paralysed and unable to walk.
So the irony is he was a super hero - invinsible as the character but eventually disabled in real life!
How ironic!
The things that Alanis Morrisette says are Ironic in her song - are not in fact true irony!
Hope this helps!

Answer 6

A good example would be…say you didn’t believe in a certain something. For the sake of this example, say you didn’t believe in God or religion and you made it well known. Then one day you’re crossing the street and you don’t see an on coming bus. You’re suddenly pushed out of the way by a priest who saves your life. In that case, someone would say that the irony there is pretty thick. A man who serves someone you don’t believe in saved you. That would be an example of irony….Hope this helps.

Answer 7

In England we have a term called 'Sods Law' which basically sums it up. Its like, something that happens in a time/place when it would be least appropriate, annoying or has some form of comical or unusual twist to it, like finding ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, lol. It IS hard to explain but I do know what it means, many people use it incorrectly like 'thats ironic' when it's not.

Answer 8

Listen to the song by Alanis Morisette - Ironic.
Some of it goes-
Like rain on your wedding day,
A free ride when you have already paid
The good advice that you just didn't take
10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife
meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife........
That is from the song and a few examples of irony!

Answer 9

The song "Ironic" by Alanis Morrisette contains no irony whatsoever.

Everything she mentions in the song is merely bad luck.

That Alanis sang a song called "Ironic" that actually has no irony in it is - well, ironic.

Answer 10

It is ironic, that Jim Fixx, who did much to popularise jogging as a form of healthy exercise in his 1977 book "The Complete Book of Running", died at the age of 52 of a heart attack while out jogging.