English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
This kind of sentence is usually absurd and may or may not be recognized as such by the person who utters it.
The actual term is Irish Bull. (Credit to Centaurus based on our discussion and choster for the related and detailed answer). In the question, it is mentioned that it may not be recognized as such by the person who utters it. An irish bull can have oxymoronic, self-contradictory or paradoxical elements in it but it is actually an absurd statement, so it differs from more general terms like oxymoron or paradox.
An Irish bull is a ludicrous, incongruent or logically absurd statement, generally unrecognized as such by its author.
The addition of the epithet Irish is a late addition.
The "Irish bull" is to the sense of a statement what the dangling participle is to the syntax. A jarring or amusing absurdity is created by hastiness or lack of attention to speech or writing.
Example:
"He'll regret it till his dying day, if ever he lives that long."
"Red" Will Danaher, in The Quiet Man
There is a good read about irish bull in the below book:
The God of Ordinary People: A Spirituality By Sean Caulfield
Such quips have always been popular; recall Mark Twain on the important role of the historian as storyteller, because
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all.
Groucho Marx opens his first autobiography admitting that
I was born at a very early age.
and remarks in a letter that
I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.
But they were humorists; for unintentionally humorous— or insightful— malapropsisms, eggcorns, tautologies, and paradoxes, consider Goldwynism and especially Yogiism (why not Berra-ism?), named for filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn and baseball manager Yogi Berra respectively.
To Goldwyn are attributed such turns as
- Anybody who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.
- I'll give you a definite maybe
Yogi Berra is known for saying things like Nobody goes there anymore— it's too crowded; When you come to a fork in the road, take it; and A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. His statements have been so widely quoted and misquoted in American media that many people are unaware that he originated such sports clichés as
- It ain't over 'till it's over.
- It's déjà vu all over again.
Naturally, as with Goldwyn and many others, some sayings are attributed to him even if there is no evidence he originated them. Berra himself warns:
I really didn't say everything I said.
One term possibly applied to such statements is a "paradox".
Apparently, it comes from the greek word 'paradoxon', meaning contrary to expectations (http://literarydevices.net/paradox/).
Some examples that come to mind are:
A literal oxymoron - is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to be contradictory in some cases exposing a paradox. Childlessness - not having children Hereditary - features passed on through act of childbirth
sharpblunt, at least that's what oxymoron literally means.
Though I am pessimistic that this is what you are looking for (as it is quite straightforward), I think that it fits the specifications:
The term is epigram. It's a short, usually witty, satirical, or humorous statement often with a contradictory or paradoxical twist.
Prefer to call it plain old sarcasm, which a lot of people don't get. Call it what you will, but isn't it wonderful some can twist words like this? Clever, in my opinion, and witty. "Never take life seriously, no one gets out alive." You just have to smile, take it for what it is.
I would call this a contrafactual statement, because if the protagonist exists, then the statement is wrong due to evidence of his own existence, if the protagonist doesn't exist, he couldn't have said it.
I'm not sure how the obvious were left out: perhaps it was respect for the Realm?
We really should leave the Brits out of this:
“And here’s Moses Kiptanui – the 19-year-old Kenyan who turned 20 a few weeks ago.”
Perhaps a sensitive decorum?
NOUN
[MASS NOUN]
Stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.
Not only is this a perfectly good descriptor for the OP, but it is also a politically correct 21st century alternative from the same stock as the ethnically insensitive Irish Bull:
"eloquent and insincere rhetoric," 1915, American English slang;
see bull (n.1) + shit (n.), probably because it smells.
But bull in the sense of "trivial or false statements" (1914), which usually is associated with this, might be a continuation of Middle English bull "false talk, fraud" (see bull (n.3)).
Then visiting Thesaurus.com we see many delightful back-ups:
Thank you Governor Alfred E.Smith from the great state of New York for making it stick!
From Turkey by way of JJ Morier novels.
Lazy Americans can't even finish Bunkum!
Thank you Honorable Congressman Walker, for embarrassing your home town: Buncombe, NC!
Originally reserved for inferior writing.
The illegitimate child of Bunkum and Hocus-pocus?
Your guess is as good as mine :-)
Meaningless talk; nonsense: a la Mr. Malarkey?
Foolish talk or ideas: Flowing from bottle to mouth and out again?
Yutzi? Nonsense:
The Double-Dutch contribution?
It's as clear as mud, but it covers the ground :-)
It is the eqivalent to a double-negative, one side cancelling the other out.
