I’ve been recording oxymorons in a small notebook for several years, and have drawn upon that list for many of the examples I’ve posted in this column. Am I concerned I might run out of examples? Not on your life. Thanks to the media, I have an unending supply of oxymorons. Recently, the media gave me a special gift: A single sentence that had both an oxymoron and a redundancy in it. The sentence was spoken by a CNN morning show host who asked a movie reviewer about the film Lincoln which had just received the nomination for Best Picture by the group who gives out the Academy Awards. The question was this (the parenthetical statements are mine): Do you think a film is more likely to win the award if it is current history (the oxymoron) or past history (the redundancy)? This question revived my interest in redundancies so I retrieved the file in which I’ve been keeping track of these phrases. I will occasionally post some of the most interesting I hear or read now that I am again tuned in to them. Here is this week’s posting of oxymorons: terribly good eternal life flood control deceptively honest bitter sweet Here are a few redundancies: ingrained habit final outcome harbinger of things to come inadvertent accident advance notice Enjoy!...

Read More of Oxymorons Again – And an Introduction to a New Topic: Redundancies!...

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