Isn't it ironic?
Isn't it ironic?
(OP)
... That an otherwise excellent songwriter like Alanis Morissette should write a hit song called "Isn't it ironic?" without understanding the meaning of the words she writes.
E.g. "It's like rain on your wedding day" "It's a black fly in your chardonnay" etc
Sorry, Alanis, it's bad luck, but it's not ironic. Irony requires more than just an unfortunate set of circumstances - the core of irony is that there must be a poignant incongruity between what is planned and can reasonably be expected to happen, and what actually happens.
"Isn't it ironic - don't you think?"
E.g. "It's like rain on your wedding day" "It's a black fly in your chardonnay" etc
Sorry, Alanis, it's bad luck, but it's not ironic. Irony requires more than just an unfortunate set of circumstances - the core of irony is that there must be a poignant incongruity between what is planned and can reasonably be expected to happen, and what actually happens.
"Isn't it ironic - don't you think?"





RE: Isn't it ironic?
Let's give the poor girl a break, since when did we hold song writers up to any form of grammatical correctness dawg?
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Besides under the correct circumstances any of the above could be an ironic situation. For example you have a lovely evening set out for your significant other. You are using the wine to cap off an otherwise perfect evening. Laughing gaily you toast, drink and start choking on the fly that landed in your wine when you were not looking.
This would definitely fulfill the following definition of irony (from Merriam-Webster online)
3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result
Just because she didn't want to take time to explain the whole situation for every line doesn't mean it cannot be an ironic situation.
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Isn't it ironic that if it rains on your wedding day it would mean tears not happiness. Oh well, it snowed on my wedding day - and I am still married 26 years later.... isn't it ironic?
RE: Isn't it ironic?
Um, no. That is not irony. Unless you were being meta-ironic in the context of this thread.
Cheers
Greg Locock
RE: Isn't it ironic?
Indeed, all of the events outlined in the song COULD be ironic IF certain other circumstances take place, but we are not informed about them.
A fly in your wine is unfortunate, but not ironic.
You are having a perfect evening with your partner, and a fly lands in your wine - still bad luck, but not yet ironic.
You decide to pop "the question", she accepts, you order a bottle of the house's best French Champagne (or chardonnay, if that's your preference), and you both drink to future happiness, she chokes on the fly that lands in her glass, and she calls the whole thing off. That's ironic!
On the evidence presented in the song, everything seems to me to be bad luck - but not ironic.
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M
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Dr Michael F Platten
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Would “an ashtray on a motorcycle” be ironic, or meta-ironic?
RE: Isn't it ironic?
Much like a screen door on a submarine to keep the flies out, or a kick stand on a skateboard.
Ray Reynolds
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http://www.photobucket.com/albums/0903/ExJnrKiwi/Ironic/Ironic.jpg
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A lady in the audience, obviously upset by this, heckled him, shouting "It's a METAPHORE!!!"
He stopped, and replied, "No it isn't: it's a similie."
He said it was the first time in his life he'd been grateful for english lessons.
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go past." Douglas Adams
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Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
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Dang, I'm bored...
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???
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
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Disease conference leaves folks ailing
Around 30 people attended a conference on infectious diseases at the University of Oslo two weeks ago, and ended up getting infected themselves.
http://
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"sick humor" - what an awful (excellent!) pun!
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Keep the wheels on the ground
Bob
RE: Isn't it ironic?
RE: Isn't it ironic?
Although the term irony is used to refer to incongruous circumstances (black fly in white wine), isn't it also used in a dramatic sense to indicate an unwittingly prophetic utterance? So a fly in the wine may be auspicious of some ill yet to be, especially if someone says, "Look at the fly in the wine. That means bad luck, ha, ha", and then chokes on it.
Does anyone remember the scene in "Airplane", where the radio announcer says, "WXYZ Chicago, where Disco lives forever!", at which point the plane takes out the antenna? That is ironic in both senses.
Will-I-Am
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Is this irony?
RE: Isn't it ironic?
Ironic expressions include the following situations, taken from a reverse dictionary:
In tone, humorosly: tongue-in-cheek
Joking in an inappropriate way: facetious
Using a word in a different sense from its usual one: antiphrasis
Bitingly or with cruelty: sarcastic, caustic, mordant
Mocking or disdainful: sardonic
Drily humorous: wry
RE: Isn't it ironic?
Here, presumably in the language that engineers use to communicate, is one of the eng-tips rules governing Profiles:
"No signature should include any reference to voting, stars, or marking posts as helpful. Doing so is cause for membership termination."
How ironic, to be 'terminated' for terminal inchoacity (this is a word?) in rulemaking?