Literary Term of the Day: Antiphrasis, or the Tiny Irony · 12:00pm Aug 23rd, 2022
Blog Number 184: "Oh, Irony! Thy Name Is... Irony" Edition
And now for something completely different. Oh, how delightfully ironic!
Quick updates to blogs before: after thinking about it, I'll stick to the one big project for now (going at a snail's pace anyway) and I'll (eventually) go ahead and start that "Ep-By-Step" concept... when I've figured out where to start. 
Yes, misusing the term "irony" is one of those things that gets my goat, because - apart from the sheer sloppiness - it's missing out on a rich world of literary techniques. It's such a surprisingly subtle and precise concept once you grasp its various forms... as I did, thanks to my Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms! But that's by the by: I'll tell you another time. Also, Wikipedia has a pretty good page on it.
Basically, I read about it and wanted to share it. Irony comes in many forms, such as:
- dramatic irony (the audience knowing something a character doesn't, and thus realizing that character's in for a big surprise),
"Go on, I'm listening."
- Socratic irony (pretending to be an ignoramus asking innocent questions in order to reveal that someone else is actually the ignoramus),
"I'm listening."
- cosmic irony (i.e. the mockeries of a Fate determined to toy with and fool people),
"I'm listening."
- and yes, the more well-known verbal irony (deliberately saying something with just enough clues that you actually mean something else entirely, usually the opposite).
Bear with me: we'll get to antiphrasis in a moment.
"Ugh. Just 'friend' me now."
A key element of irony is the sense that there's how things are and how things seem to be, someone involved secretly knows what's going on better than someone else does, and the heightened contrast this gives when someone else (say, the audience) is in on the joke.
- Note it doesn't have to be a nice joke: tragic irony is basically dramatic irony with more terrible, even heartbreaking consequences.
- There's also a sense of things being turned inside-out or back-to-front, such as the situational irony of a hunter becoming the hunted, or the fire department catching fire.
- There's even meta irony, wherein someone uses irony ironically (sort of a subversion of a subversion), perhaps by pretending to be ironic while really meaning what they say. But let's not get too heady...
The "false ignorance" aspect actually has a long pedigree. A stock character in Greek comedy was known as the Eiron, someone who was basically a modest underdog with hidden smarts. Especially contrasted with another stock character, the Alazon, a braggart who would more than likely turn out to be a complete fool, and who was more likely to be the victim of irony than the culprit of irony.
Case in point.
(Incidentally, and appropriately enough, "Eiron" also appears to be the etymological origin for the word "irony").
That's also kinda the key to understanding the distinct forms of irony above: who is doing the fooling, and who is being fooled? Verbal irony can be deliberately done by a character at the audience's expense, whereas dramatic irony is done to a character for the audience's gratification (even if only in a bitter, cynical sense, as in tragic irony). Meanwhile, cosmic irony is done to people by Fate (or the universe, or the gods, or whichever cosmic force you care to personify and/or name).
"WHY..."
"...THAT'S..."
"...MEEEEEEEEEE!"
Word of caution, though: Note that this doesn't at any point mean irony is unambiguously "good", any more than pranks and banter: it's wise to consider your audience.
Too often, irony can come across as smug and condescending, since it presumes the ignorance of someone else.
It's also moot if the person who thinks they're the one fooling someone else actually is as ignorant as they "pretend" to be, in which case it's just a long-winded way of being stupid.
If only for a practical reason, there's probably a good reason we tend to go around saying exactly what we mean to say, or at least trying to - it smoothes communication.
And irony, like an ambush tactic, gets less effective the more it's used and the more indiscriminately it's used. For what I hope is an obvious reason.
So after that long pre-amble, what the heck has antiphrasis got to do with it?
- Antiphrasis, basically, is one of the simplest forms of irony: using a word in a way deliberately contrary to its meaning. I'll let the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms explain:
antiphrasis
[an-tif-rǎ-sis]A *figure of speech in which a single word is used in a sense directly opposite to its usual meaning, as in the naming of a giant as 'Tiny' or of an enemy as 'friend'; the briefest form of *irony. Adjective: antiphrastic.
Pictured: "Angel".
Note: I was going to note that the "briefest form of irony" is contested by Wikipedia's concept of irony punctuation, but apparently that turned out to be a way to punctuate irony, not a form of irony itself. Still interesting, though.
TV Tropes gives two antithetical examples: Fluffy the Terrible, wherein a vicious animal is given a cutesy name, and Deathbringer the Adorable, wherein a cutesy animal is given a vicious name.
Other examples include, yes, calling an enemy "friend", calling a cruel person "sweetie", calling an idiot "genius", calling a mute "chatterbox", and - my personal favourite, because I'm a Crash Bandicoot fan - calling a giant "Tiny".
Go ahead. Crack a joke. Tiny dares you...
Most obviously, can be done for humour or surprise value, but it could be done to make a serious point e.g. about investing too much in names over the actual thing itself. After all, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet."
It's that simple. Short, sweet, effective.
Um...
Impossible Numbers, out! That's all, folks! Byeeeeeeeeee!
A very handy guide not only to what is and isn't irony, but also the taxonomy of irony. Thank you for it.
5681260
Turns out Discord is the perfect teaching tool for irony.
I mean, that was basically his plan in his debut.
Ooh, a new kind of blog? For literary nerds like me who totally know about these sorts of terms?
Man, my high school AP English teacher would be shaking her head in disappointment at me... All the A-word literary terms are just a jumbled mess in my head.
Hooray for irony!
5681341
Nice breakdown!
Oddly enough, I first heard this word in French and I thought the person was saying "antifreeze," which is ironic, because I was on a train at the time.
5681376
For some reason, I'm now thinking of an early Simpsons episode, "The Crepes of Wrath".
BOO! BOO! 😣 I throw a croissant in your general direction! 🥐
"Yeah, you kids don't say anything about 'sarcasm' because it's obviously a word that I just made up!"
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5681824
"Oh yes, because it never crossed my mind to discuss sarcasm relative to irony. No one has ever done that before. What a dilemma!"
5681345
Just be glad I didn't use footage from the Princess Of Irony instead.
Mostly because I can't find the one of her saying 'yay!' anywhere.