Antiphrase

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A figure of speech that conveys meaning through irony by stating the opposite of what is intended
2. A rhetorical device where a phrase is used in a contradictory manner to highlight a point
3. A literary technique that relies on the juxtaposition of contrary meanings to create an ironic effect

Etymology: Antiphrasis is a Greek term for using a word in the opposite of its normal sense, and the ancient Greeks had a neat name for it: "antiphrasis" combines "anti" (against, opposite) with "phrasis" (speech, expression). Its best-known examples are words like "Euxine," the Greek name for the Black Sea, which literally meant "hospitable" even though the sea was notoriously dangerous to sailors. The idea is that a speaker says the reverse of what they mean, either to soften a truth or to make a joke at someone's expense. The term entered English as a rhetorical and grammatical label, and it belongs to the same family as "irony" and "sarcasm," though writers using it tend to restrict it to the case where a word itself flips meaning. Scholars still debate how often ancient writers used it deliberately versus how often the meanings simply drifted over time.

Synonyms: opposite, contradiction, antonym, counterphrase, inverse