4/05/2010

Oxymorons

There are lots of strange phenomena in the English language. One of them is the oxymoron. An oxymoron is a compound noun formed by contradictory terms. For example:


original copy


How can a document be original if it’s a copy? You see it’s a bit absurd, but there are lots of cases, where this happens. Take a look at the columns below. Try to match the a word from each column to make a common oxymoron. You’ll find the answers in the comments below.


1 alone                  a war
2 bitter                  b ugly
3 comfortably          c together
4 deafening            d sweet
5 found                  e silence
6 freezer                f recording
7 friendly               g reality
8 good                   h politician
9 holy                     i numb
10 honest               j news
11 live                   k missing
12 old                    l grief
13 only                 m games
14 pretty               n fire
15 virtual              o choice
16 war                  p burn


What do you think? Kind of peculiar, aren’t they?

1 comment:

Adam Yerman said...

Answers: 1.c, 2.d, 3.i, 4.e, 5.k, 6.p, 7.n, 8.l, 9.a, 10.h, 11.f, 12.j, 13.o, 14.b, 15.g, 16.m