IRONY

noun (plural -nies) Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler Date: 1502 a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning, 2. the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning, a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by ~, an ironic expression or utterance, 3. a. incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result, an event or result marked by such incongruity, incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play, see: wit