• (British) IPA: /ɒksɪˈmɔːɹɒn/
• (America) enPR äk-sē-môrʹ-än, IPA: /ˌɑksiˈmɔɹɑn/, /ɑksɪˈmɔɹɑn/

oxymoron (plural oxymorons)

1. (rhetoric) A figure of speech in which two words or phrases with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect.
   • [1835, L[arret] Langley, A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster: Printed by C. White, Baxter-Gate, OCLC 1062248511 ↗, page 35 ↗:

     In Oxymoron jarring phrases join
     And terms opposed in harmony combine.]

   • 1996, John Sinclair (sociologist), "Culture and Trade: Some Theoretical and Practical Considerations", in Emile G. McAnany, Kenton T. Wilkinson (eds.), Mass Media and Free Trade: NAFTA and the Cultural Industries, University of Texas Press

     For Theodor Adorno and his colleagues at the Frankfurt School who coined the term, "culture industry" was an oxymoron, intended to set up a critical contrast between the exploitative, repetitive mode of industrial mass production under capitalism and the associations of transformative power and aesthetico-moral transcendence that the concept of culture carried in the 1940s, when it still meant "high" culture.

2. (loosely, sometimes proscribed) A contradiction in terms.

• pleonasm, redundancy

• French: oxymore
• German: Oxymoron
• Italian: ossimoro
• Portuguese: oxímoro, oximoro
• Russian: окси́морон
• Spanish: oxímoron