Oxymora

“Military intelligence,” said Groucho, “is a contradiction in terms.” Other examples:

  • Almost exactly
  • Detailed summary
  • Dry lake
  • Elevated subway
  • Exact estimate
  • Found missing
  • Guest host
  • Limited omniscience
  • Liquid gas
  • Local long distance
  • Mandatory options
  • Neoconservatism
  • Only choice
  • Open secret
  • Original copy
  • Virtual reality
  • Wireless cable

Also: Dodge Ram.

| Language

Palindromes

Real-life palindromes:

  • MALAYALAM is a language of southern India.
  • EKALAKA LAKE exists in southeastern Montana.
  • DR. (Michael) AWKWARD is Longstreet Professor of English and Afro-American Literature at Emory University.
| Language

Irish Bulls

Three “Irish bulls” cited in Henry B. Wheatley’s Literary Blunders (1893). “We know what the writer means, although he does not exactly say it”:

  • From the report of an Irish Benevolent Society: “Notwithstanding the large amount paid for medicine and medical attendance, very few deaths occurred during the year.”
  • A country editor’s correspondent wrote: “Will you please to insert this obituary notice? I make bold to ask it, because I know the deceased had a great many friends who would be glad to hear of his death.”
  • Quoted in the Greville Memoirs: “He abjured the errors of the Romish Church, and embraced those of the Protestant.”

“From the errors of others,” wrote Publilius Syrus, “a wise man corrects his own.”

| Humor · Language

“A Siege of Cranes”

Ornithological nouns of assemblage:

  • a murmuration of starlings
  • a desert of lapwing
  • a parliament of owls
  • a gulp of cormorants
  • a pitying of doves
  • a murder of crows
  • an exaltation of larks
  • a charm of finches
  • a stand of flamingoes
  • a watch of nightingales
  • a rafter of turkeys
  • a committee of vultures
  • a descent of woodpeckers
  • an unkindness of ravens
  • a convocation of eagles

Who comes up with these? They’re wonderfully poetic. Also: a sleuth of bears, a shrewdness of apes, a flutter of butterflies, an intrusion of cockroaches, a bask of crocodiles, a skulk of foxes, a smack of jellyfish, a leap of leopards, a crash of rhinoceroses, a scurry of squirrels, a streak of tigers, a shiver of sharks.

| Language