More on Oxymoron

From the Introduction:

"OXYMORON is itself an oxymoron. In Ancient Greek oxus means "sharp" and moros means "dull." Thus an oxymoron is a "sharp dullness." The terms are to be taken metaphorically: "sharp" as a metaphor for clever or wise, and "dull" as a metaphor for stupid or foolish. So oxymoron means "foolish wise" or "silly clever." It is the rhetorical figure in which two antithetical words are pitted against each other, adjective against noun, as in John Milton's living death, loud silence, or darkness visible. (...)

"Besides written witticisms and anonymous jokes, More on Oxymoron also contains visual examples. As Alice says, "What is the use of a book without pictures?" One of the novelties of this book is the way it analyzes pictures in terms of verbal rhetoric." (...)

"This is an amateur work, addressed throughout to the general reader and animated by love of the imagination. It is like a book of poems "explained" in prose."