Last night Ivy said something to the effect of “Since her boobs are fake, they naturally stand up.” Something about that really struck me as funny. I guess it’s like an oxymoron, although at this point I think I’m beginning to forget what those various literary terms actually mean as so many people misuse them. I just looked up ironic, to affirm it’s definition in my mind. Dictionary.com (whose address is oddly – but not ironically – dictionary.reference.com) has a very interesting usage note:
The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply .coincidental. or .improbable,. in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York. Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market, where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency.
I was going to propose that we use a new word that described coincidental situations that everybody thought were ironic but actually weren’t. I thought the word ironical would be good. Turns out that it’s already a real word. Is that ironic or what?