An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines normally-contradictory terms. The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective-noun combination of two words like failed success.

Writers often use an oxymoron to call attention to an apparent contradiction. For example, Wilfred Owen’s poem The Send-off refers to soldiers leaving for the front line, who “lined the train with faces grimly gay.” The oxymoron ‘grimly gay’ highlights the contradiction between how the soldiers feel and how they act: though they put on a brave face and act cheerful, they feel grim. Some examples of oxymorons are dark sunshine, cold sun, living dead, dark light, almost exactly etc.