Anachronism and Oxymoron

Types of Literary Devices

Anachronism & Oxymoron

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Anachronism

A literary device that places someone or something associated with a particular historical time in the wrong time period.

Anachronism comes from the Greek words “chronos” or “khronos” meaning “time” and the prefix “ana-” meaning “back” or “again.”

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Behavioral or cultural anachronism

a person carrying a conversation in Latin in the twenty-first century.

Parachronism

a modern-day person using a washboard to clean clothes instead of a washing machine

Prochronism

a microwave in the Stone Age

3 types of anachronism

Other examples of anachronism

• Titanic—Leonardo DiCaprio’s character refers to fishing in a lake in Wisconsin that was manmade and not created until after five years after the Titanic sank.

• Pirates of the Caribbean—They make a reference to Singapore, even though the movie is set in the 1700s and Singapore wasn’t the name of a place until 1819.

• The Green Mile—Prisoners on death row are executed by electric chair in Louisiana in 1935 in the movie, yet electric chairs weren’t in use in Louisiana until a few years later.

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Oxymoron

An oxymoron is a literary device combining oppositional words to create a unique word or phrase. An oxymoron can seem absurd yet make perfect sense at the same time.

The word “oxymoron” is an oxymoron itself and derives from the ancient Greek words “oxys,” meaning “sharp,” and “moros,” meaning “dull.”

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Examples of Common Oxymorons

Awfully good

Virtual reality

Old news

Pretty ugly

Living dead

Examples of Oxymorons in Literature

Romeo and Juliet (1597)

“ Parting is such sweet sorrow”

Persuasion (1818)

“ angry pleasure”

Don Juan (1819)

“ melancholy merriment”

Charlotte Brontë (1847)

“ delicious poison”

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