"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 16/02/18 (irony)

There are some words which if, as a linguist or a lexicographer, you are asked for definition, you freeze inside, because some of them are notoriously difficelt to define. An one of the ones that I personally dread is irony. When people ask me about irony or ironic, it's really, really difficult. It goes back to the Greek eiron, which meant to dissemble. Mostly when we talk about irony these days, we're talking about a situational irony. And back in the '96, the singer Alanis Morissette caused a real stir with her song Ironic. I'm sure lots of people remember it. It includes a list of things, so, there's a rain on your wedding day, the good advice that you just didn't take, a free ride when you've already paid, a death-row pardon two minutes later. And to those who took a sort of keen interest in the English language, whether or not you want to call them pedants, they said, "This is rubbish, this isn't irony, these are just sort of unfortunate events. This doesn't fulfil the definition of irony". So, true situational irony, I suppose, would be things like fire station burned down or a police station gets robbed. You post a tweet saying what a waste of time social media is, for example. That sort of situational irony. And so critics would say ironic doesn't, as I say, involve odd or coincidental events, but - and this is a reason why it's so difficult - irony has been used vaguely and fuzzily for about 150 years. So, if you look up in the Oxford English Dictionary, there's a quote from 1906. "The gentlemen who add to their advertisments for coachman or gardeners the ironic phrase, 'no scholar need apply'". You could take that as a bit of verbal irony, a bit of sarcasm, but it's not completely clear. And it's very likely that in the course of time - in fact, probably already in some dictionaries - ironic can be used simply to describe a curious or a surprising event, just as Alanis Morissette used it in her song, because it has been used that way pretty much since the 19th century. And so, as I say, only a matter of time before they go with that way. And whether or not you say that itself, the new dictionary definitions are a classic case of a situational irony. the jury's out, but personally please don't ask me what it means in meantime.