Monday, April 18, 2016

 

Oxymoron - the open secret

I was seriously funny introducing the word oxymoron to a group of trainee speakers at a Teamsters International club in Singapore. I was asked to be Language Evaluator at a club in Singapore. Language Evaluator in the UK would be called Grammarian.

I chose as word of the day, oxymoron. I wrote it on the white board whilst waiting for permission to start.  I looked around for something solid to use as a ruler to keep my writing straight. I found a plastic A shape for displaying the word Language Evaluator was solid and straight.

The word oxymoron is a combination of the word O x y, meaning sharp, and moron, dull or stupid. An oxymoron looks like two terms which contradict each other but creates a new idea. Here are some examples:

o x y - sharp or point (spellchecker wants to change this to oxo)
Moron - from moros stupid
oxymoron
seriously funny
act naturally
jumbo shrimp
living dead
hell's angels
deafening silence
Microsoft works
open secret
plastic glasses
sleeping policeman
Military intelligence
only choice
working holiday
genuine imitation
v i r t u a l reality (spell checker wants to turn this into visual)

minor crisis
howling silence (book title by Catherine Lim)

The audience came up with more:
pretty ugly
Cold war
true lies

You can make up a sentence incorporating several:

It was an open secret that plastic glasses gave us only one choice, to call in military intelligence and offer them a working holiday.

More samples of useful information from
grammar.about.com

I have used the word Oxymoron at least three times in Singapore.

Monday April 18 2016 in Singapore at Brilliant Advanced.  In advance I suggested to the person who invited me to the club that we should ask everybody in the room to use the word in a sentence so they had the confidence to pronounce an unfamiliar word and got practise at least once, which might help them remember it later as they had heard it used about 20 times by the different members of the audience at the start.

So I was asked to introduce the meeting with word of the day and the introductions of members and guests.

I should have written on the whiteboard:
1 Give your name - loudly, clearly, slowly - spell if it's difficult, repeat your name
2 Your Toastmasters Club name / Guest/ where you found this club details
3 Use the word of the day.

Angela Lansbury, author, speech coach, speaker.

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