[The Horrible Esthete]

Hehehe -- I can't resist.

Irony is the use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. So the title and matter of both New Orleans is sinking or New Orleans is Beat isn't ironic at all. It's coincidence.

I guess we can blame Alanis Morissette's blatant misuse of the word ironic.

It's like a traffic jam/When you're already late
He won the lottery/And died the next day

I guess popular usage is shifting to mean something more along the lines of ironies of fate, or something.

Until then, however, that the Hip have a song called NOIS is coincidence! :lol:

I think Alanis takes a lot of unjustified heat for that song. Some of the stuff in it is pretty ironic. I don't agree with your definition above as being the only correct or useful definition (granted, you never said it was). I like this definition: "a state of affairs that appears perversely contrary to what one expects". Something is ironic when it is different or opposite to the expected or intended result, usually in a perverse or humourous way.

10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife is ironic. Imagine your hands are bound with a rope by an assailant. You're struggling to loose your bonds. Your assailant retires for a couple minutes to take a wizz or something. You claw your way over to the kitchen cupboards. All you need is a knife. You open the drawer or cupboard only to find it filled with 10,000 spoons and nary a knife. Your assailant returns and cracks open a yogurt or an ice cream or something and spoons himself a nice big mouthful, waiting for his buddy to show up so he can load the moving van with your worldly possessions, including your spoons-of-the-world collection. Now, Alanis is trying to cram that concept into one line of a 3 minute song. Give her a break........

Sorry, can't do it, ct. The 10,000 spoons and nary a knife thing isn't irony; it's just bad luck.

Now, if the speaker desperately needed a knife the day after she had given away 10,000 knives because she had never ever used one and never thought she ever would, that would be ironic.