Oxymoron

[Rrahulkumar]

Oxymoron: An Oxymoron is defined as a phrase in which two words of opposite meanings are brought together....

Here are some funny oxymoron's :
1) Clearly Misunderstood.
2) Exact Estimate.
3) Small Crowd.
4) Act Naturally.
5) Found Missing.
6) Fully Empty.
7) Pretty Ugly.
Seriously Funny.
9) Only Choice.
10) Original Copies...
11)Simple maths...

And the Mother of all

12) Happily Married

[diskaon]

Business ethics

[Rrahulkumar]

Business ethics

[timmy]

"Found Missing" baffles me, as it is part of British English. Of course, Americans are much bigger snobs than the British, so taking on British airs by business advertisements, news broadcasters, and Madonna is a very common thing. So we have a spate of snobs here telling us about "rezorses" rather than resources. A few years back, the fad buzz word was "peninshula," rather than "peninsula."

Along with "found missing," we have "went missing," as in, "Where is that teacup?" "It has gone missing."

This brings mental pictures of the children's cartoon movie, "Beauty and the Beast," where the teacups, along with the silverware, are all running about and singing.

An inanimate object cannot "go missing," it either is missing or it isn't. Go and went are verbs of action and inanimate objects are incapable of action on their own.

Furthermore, how can a person "go missing"? Missing is not a destination or a location toward which a person can go, or from which he can return.

Back to the subject, let's not forget "Awfully good" in this list!

[TwoRivers]

In the original sense of "awful", i.e. awe inspiring, things could certainly be "awfully" good or pretty.

[timmy]

True enough, but however much we may dislike the modern usages of older words, we ignore the commonly accepted meanings of today at our peril.

For instance, consider the man who attends a nice party, and upon leaving, tells his host, "Thank you for a wonderful evening. I very much enjoyed having pleasant intercourse with your wife tonight."

No matter how much the party-goer would object to the modern meaning of the word "intercourse," as opposed to the original one, which meant "interaction" (rather than a specific kind of interaction), I dare say that the fellow using the archaic definition would be unlikely to get a chance to explain his intentions before his host knocked him on his posterior with a mouth full of bloody chicklets.