IF gOD COULDN'T KILL IT, WE'RE NOT GOING TO:

In general, irony refers to a clash between expectations and outcomes. Typically, the outcome is the opposite of what someone wanted or hoped for. It's ironic, for example, when your boss calls you into her office, and you're expecting a promotion, but you instead find out you've been fired.

This clash carries over to verbal irony, in which people say the opposite of what they literally mean. But such expectations are subjective, and verbal ironists don't always mean the exact opposite of what they say. Insulting someone by saying they're the most intelligent person on Earth, for example, doesn't mean they are the least intelligent; it just means they're not all that bright.

Some cases, however, are relatively straightforward. Consider situational irony, in which two things become odd or humorous when juxtaposed. A photo of a sign in front of a school with a misspelled word - "We are committed to excellense" - went viral. And the January 2020 rescheduling of an annual snowball fight at the University of British Columbia was correctly described as ironic because of the reason for the cancelation: too much snow.

In other cases, however, a situation may lack an essential element that irony seems to require. It's not ironic when someone's home is burglarized, but it is if the owner had just installed an elaborate security system and had failed to activate it. It's not ironic when a magician cancels a show due to "unforeseen circumstances," but it is when a psychic's performance is canceled for the same reason.

In 1996, Alanis Morissette was roundly criticized by pedants who argued that the examples of situational irony in her song "Ironic" - "It's like rain on your wedding day" - were not, in fact, ironic.

Warnings abound in dictionaries and style guides. "The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage," for example, warns that "not every coincidence, curiosity, oddity and paradox is an irony even loosely."

One reason that irony is so confusing is that the word also refers to a certain perspective or style: one that is detached, aloof and seemingly world-weary. This affectation is often referred to as the "ironic attitude" and has come to be associated with adolescents or young adults.

Following 9/11, many pundits announced the "death of irony," arguing that a frivolous and flippant attitude, often described as ironic, was out of step with the times.

If this were true, irony didn't stay dead for long. In fact, the ironic attitude has been declared dead with almost every change in recent American politics. In 2008, Joan Didion worried that Barack Obama's election was fueled by a naïve belief in "hope" that would transform the country into an "irony-free zone." Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote in 2019 that Donald Trump's hypocrisy has - once again - killed irony.

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