Re: [9fans] c++

[Wes Kussmaul <wes@authentrus.com>]

On Mon, 2012-11-19 at 21:08 -0500, Matthew Veety wrote:
> How do you studiously not do something? Doesn't the imply working
> hard at something?

Irony (from the Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning dissimulation
or feigned ignorance)[1] is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or
situation in which there is an incongruity between the literal and the
implied meaning. No written method for indicating irony exists, though
an irony punctuation mark has been proposed. In the 1580s, Henry Denham
introduced a rhetorical question mark or percontation point which looks
like a reversed question mark. This mark was also proposed by the French
poet Marcel Bernhardt at the end of the 19th century to indicate irony
or sarcasm.

Ironic statements (verbal irony)[2] are statements that imply a meaning
in opposition to their literal meaning. A situation is often considered
to be ironic (situational irony) if there is an "incongruity between the
actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected
result."[3] The discordance of verbal irony may be deliberately created
as a means of communication (as in art or rhetoric). Descriptions or
depictions of situational irony, whether in fiction or in non-fiction,
serves the communicative function of sharpening or highlighting certain
discordant features of reality. Verbal and situational irony are often
used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of
simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes emphasize one's
meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of
the truth — or drastically and obviously understates a factual
connection.