• (British) IPA: /ɒksɪˈmɔːɹɒn/
• (US) enPR: äk-sē-môrʹ-än, äk-sĭ-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 ↗, page 35 ↗:

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

   • 1996, John Sinclair, “Culture and Trade: Some Theoretical and Practical Considerations”, in Emile G. McAnany, Kenton T. Wilkinson, editors, 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, oxymoron
• German: Oxymoron
• Italian: ossimoro
• Portuguese: oxímoro, oximoro
• Russian: окси́морон
• Spanish: oxímoron