More On Oxymorons Trivia Quiz

Answer: sun

"Take a journey to the Land of the Midnight Sun." It's an oft-used phrase, "midnight sun," when talking about lands that lie near the Earth's poles. As my kind editor looney_tunes explains: "Midnight sun is an actual occurrence - there is sun visible in the middle of the period of the day we call night - and it never gets dark for the time when this is happening.

The oxymoron emphasizes how unusual this is."

Answer: dream

"This limousine handles like a real dream." The word "real" in this instance, is a shortened form of really, used for emphasis - that car is very dreamy to drive. But a "dream", of course, is not real. So to call something a "real dream" is a contradiction in terms.

Answer: shorts

"I'd like to buy a pair of those long shorts." The phrase is oxymoronic because "long" is the opposite of "short". But colloquially, we call a pair of pants that only cover the upper parts of the legs "shorts". So it sounds weird, and oxymoronic, to speak of a pair of long shorts - they are longer than short shorts, but still shorts.

Answer: half

"The injured quarterback played the whole half." The word whole is being used to mean the entirety of the noun it modifies, and half is shorthand for "half of the game". Similarly, you can speak about anything that neatly divides into two equal segments -- of a game, of a pecan, of a Kit Kat candy bar - by saying that the half in question is entire, not fragmented. So a whole half is not as oxymoronic as it first sounds.

Answer: load

"The train car carried an empty load." Look up the phrase "empty load" and you will see that it has roots in transportation and means "containing no cargo". But we also know that the word "empty" means "nothing" and the word "load" means "something". So terming something an "empty load" is a pairing of opposite terms.

Answer: ugly

"The new building is pretty ugly." This oxymoron speaks for itself. "Pretty" means "lovely", but it also can mean "sort of". So opining that something is "pretty ugly" can be a straightforward description, but it can also sound like a strange pairing.

Answer: sweet

"The neighbors were terribly sweet to bring a housewarming gift." If something is sweet, you don't think of it as being terrible. Unless you are dealing with this oxymoron. In this phrase, the word "terribly" is being used to mean "very", rather than is usual meaning of "awfully" or "badly", and "sweet" can mean "kind". So the phrase can mean: means "awfully kind". Uh oh, there's another oxymoron.

Answer: ended

"The defendant's guilt or innocence is an open-ended question." The words "open ended" mean that a subject is still open for discussion. "Open" is describing the kind of ending we have here - no closure, no finish, no proper ending (as yet). The oxymoron lies in the fact that if a subject is any kind of "ended", it's over. Finished. Closed. So there is logically no such thing as "open ended".

Therefore it's an oxymoron.

Answer: tights

"The ballet dancer was wearing some loose tights." Tights -- coverings for the legs of women and men -- are designed to fit snugly. The word "loose" implies the opposite of "tight". The idea of something that should be tight actually being loose is dipolar. So "loose tights" is not only an oxymoron, but potentially a fashion faux pas, as well.

Answer: music

"Composer Arnold Schoenberg often gets credit/blame for writing atonal music." According to the Free Dictionary, music is "an art form consisting of sequences of sounds in time, esp. tones of definite pitch organized melodically, harmonically, rhythmically." So by that definition, without tones -- that is "atonal" -- music just isn't music. "Atonal music", then, is an oxymoron.

The phrase describes music that intentionally uses tones that are unexpected to the listener, that are not consistent with our cultural expectation of musical sounds.