Dictionary Editors Say This Is the Most Misused Word in the English Language

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From MSN:

A traffic jam when you’re already late.

A free ride when you’ve already paid.

The fact that the King James Bible is the most shoplifted book in the United States.

One of these three things is an example of irony—the reversal of what is expected or intended. The other two (no offense to Alanis Morissette) are not. The difference between them may be one of the most rage-inducing linguistic misunderstandings you’re likely to read about on the Internet or hear about from the determined grammar nerds in your life. ‘Ironic’ does not, technically, mean ‘unfortunate,’ ‘interesting,’ or ‘coincidental,’ despite these terms often being used interchangeably. And that frequent misuse has not escaped linguists; according to the editors at Dictionary.com, ‘We submit that ironic might be the most abused word in the English language.’

That’s a tough claim to prove, but it’s clear that confusion over the definition of irony is persistent, and decades old. ‘Irony’ makes Harvard linguist Steven Pinker’s list of the 58 most commonly misused words in English, and ranks in the top 1 percent of all word lookups on Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. Even Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald got it wrong, some say, when he claimed in 1939, ‘It is an ironic thought that the last picture job I took yielded me five thousand dollars five hundred and cost over four thousand in medical attention.” That’s not ironic.

. . . .

There’s Socratic irony (an ancient rhetorical move), and dramatic irony (an ancient theatrical move), but the definition of irony we care about—and the kind that’s most bitterly debated—is situational irony. Situational irony occurs when, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, ‘a state of affairs or an event… seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.’

. . . .

The trick, according to purists, is the deliberately contrary part—for a situation to be ironic, it must be the opposite of what is expected, not merely an amusing coincidence. A traffic jam when you’re already late may be an undesirable coincidence, but it is not the opposite outcome one would expect when leaving for work late (especially if that person lives in a major city).

Link to the rest at MSN and thanks to Felix for the tip.

The OP reminded PG of a lovely quote:

The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.

~ Antonin Scalia