Sarcasm

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Sarcasm is stating the opposite of an intended meaning especially in order to sneeringly, slyly, jest or mock a person, situation or thing. It is strongly associated with irony, with some definitions classifying it as a type of verbal irony intended to insult or wound. An example of sarcasm is using "that's fantastic" to mean "that's awful".

It is used mostly in a humorous manner, but can express annoyance or anger.

Sarcasm

Sarcasm can be difficult to grasp in written form. To prevent this some people emphasize words with italics, bold, capitalization, and/or underlining (e.g. that’s just great); sarcastic comments on the Internet with an emoticon, such as ^o); or surround them with a made-up markup language tag, e.g. *sarcasm*, <sarcasm> or <snicker>.

Writers in the UK and some other countries have adopted the use of (!) (An exclamation mark in parentheses) following speech in which sarcasm or irony is perceptible via the tone of voice, a punctuation mark which is very regularly seen in subtitles.

Some popular Emoticons for Sarcasm are ^°^ , -.- , ;p , ~~ , or the :ulli:-Smiley.

Notes

A"Sarcasm" appeared in English in 1579, from Late Latin "sarcasmos," in turn from Hellenistic or Medieval Greek "sarkasmos," and ancient Greek σαρκάζω (sarkazo, meaning 'to tear flesh'). (In ancient Greek the word for this idea was instead χλευασμός). Irony is closely associated with sarcasm, although Socrates, considered the father of dissembling irony, was not sarcastic. Sarcasm is frequently referred to as the "lowest form of wit", recent repetitions of this phrase can include a further comment stating "but the highest form of humour".

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Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 19:26:12 PDT (GMT -0700)
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