Irony as a Motivational tool

Shared by AH.

An example

When I see something I dislike, or some stupidity, I will call something "duck sauce". This saying is ironic.

My sister and I were skiing when we came up with this. There is an existing saying called "lame sauce", which is slightly ironic, because there is still the word "lame" in there, but there is obviously no "sauce" involved. "Lame sauce" is a saying, and "lame duck" is a saying, so I combined them to "duck sauce", a third saying carrying the meaning of the former.

Examples of Irony

Requested by one of my intrepid commenters, I will post a few examples of irony.

A lot of the examples I have are along the lines of sarcasm and metaphor. "I could care less", or "blew me mind". I don't particularly include want to include things like puns or outright lies, although for certain people, those count as well.

It turns out I'm much better at spotting misuses of irony than I am actually creating some. It seems like as soon as I am able to sub-categorize the ironic statement, it no longer seems like a valid example.

"Break a leg"

Irony on Bones

Good discussion of irony on tonights episode of Bones.

Cam: Yeah, it's ironic
Daisy: With all due respect, that's not irony. People may think it is irony, but it's really just an unfortunate juxtaposition of events.
Angela: Well, I guess they're going to need a shorter word for that.

The Winter Olympics in Vancouver have a shortage of snow.

Meanwhile in Dallas, there was a record snowstorm.

I just wanted to point that out. There's nothing at all ironic here.