h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What IS the irony of swatch?

No idea.

It is swiss, and its a watch and yet it doesn't run like clockwork and is tacky pap.

Well.. would help just explaining irony??

TVs "Great Uncle Bulgaria", a puppet from the classic childrens TV series "The Wombles" was found to have been damaged by the recent flooding in Britain.
The series concerned a set of creatures (Wombles) who lived underneath Wimbledon Common and made their living by recycling things that had been discarded by the humans.
Ironically, the producers of the show said that they could not repair the puppet and would just have to throw it away.

It has often been suggested that our cousins across the pond (sorry guys)have an altogether alternative, and the snobs amongst us would say, less sophisticated sense of humour than we. In recent years this premise has been confounded by the stylings of Married With Children, Rosanne, Garry Shandling, The creators of the Simpsons and Futurama, South Park, The Clerks/Mallrats/Chasing Amy/Dogma boys and many more. The younger devotees of said products began to assert themselves as humourists, and started to question what is the true definition of irony; in the hope that this will increase their kudos in existentialist coffee house circles, where Winona Ryder could not.
In order to clear the air, and to exploit an obviously crucial target market for her, a singer by the name of Alanis Morrisette whipped out a song inventively titled Ironic, with all sorts of examples which she hoped would set the record straight - and angst-crippled teenagers all over North America breathed a sigh of relief.

Fictional Example:

A man is stuck in a traffic jam in a city, he is late for a meeting where he will be making a speech. This man happens to be city road planner on his way to his speech about how he has solved the cities traffic jam problems.

Well it's more ironic than rain on your wedding day. That is bad luck not bloody irony

As it's one of those words where I'm never sure about its meaning I thought I'd better look it up.

Oxford Mini Dictionary

irony
Expression of meaning by the use of words normally conveying the opposite; apparent perversity of fate or circumstances.

Which seems to leave it with a pretty wide scope certainly including all the examples given.

So what is sarcasm then?

I would say that sarcasm is more about saying the opposite of what you mean/something else than you mean. It should be said in a way so that other people understand that you are being sarcastic. Personally I use sarcasm alot...especially when people are asking me questions that appear to me as really unecessary. Like when I pierced my ears, and someone said "oh, have you pierced your ears?". I answered "No."
That's sarcasm, but of course, you can make much more out of it than that.

There is this story in the paper this morning about this woman who broke her husbands jaw in an arguement started when he refused to go to a protest rally about the abolishment of domestic violence.Irony or what???

and what is this:
at school i had two mates, let's call them harry and sally.
harry was the one who always wanted me to explain math to him and when i did he told me exactly what he would have to do in the test. only that he didn't do then and wrote an insatisfactory test.
sally asked questions like "where is africa" or "could you write down the diploid chromosome set, please?" ("set" here is german "satz" which means both "set" and "sentence")
ok.
one day i was sitting near the biology archive with some people. harry came out of the archive with a prepared eagle and i meant, directly translated, "i should have known that harry has a bird" which means that he is slightly nuts. alright, that was funny...but then sally came out, in her hands a tray with at least five birds on it
...we all broke down in laughter, and sally didn't have the slightest clue why...

About 4 years ago, a good friend and I had a massive argument about something quite insignificant indeed. We we're both trying to prove our intellectual superiority as well as get our point across.

The argument ended when my adversary muttered; 'Oh that's ironic', I didn't hear him and asked him to repeat himself.... he said
'Irony, you idiot! Do I need to spell it out? I.R.O.N.E.Y.'
I wet myself with glee immediately

14-Nov-2000: The Irish times web page has a vote "Is it democratic for the person with the majority of the votes not to be elected?" [yes|no]
Is this virtual poll going to be counted by simple majority then?

Incognitas
according to the same dictionary and running the risk of this turning into another British English thread.

sarcasm
ironical remark; use of such remarks.


and to complete the trilogy

sardonic
humorous in a grim or sarcastic way.

I think this puts firmly in circular definitions / definitions circular territory

Thank you(and I don't believe I'm typing this)Bald Bloke for that was a succinct explanation.

I think sarcasm is irony, but used in an aggressive, vicious way.
Irony has a lighter touch.

So, if in a football match, a striker misses an open goal, his goalie says ironically to a defender, "He's a great striker, isn't he? His fellow striker however, shouts in his face sarcastically, "You are such a great striker, aren't you?"

A situation or occurence can be ironic, but only the willful action of a person can be sarcastic.

should that be spelt "wilful" - (here are the parentheses for you to complete in revenge

) Cheers.

Ironically (?) I have completely lost the original post of "The Law of Pedantic Reverberation".