In the past, rhetoric and elocution were standard school subjects and students were taught long lists of technical names of figures of speech and their meaning. ''Oxymoron'' was one of these, along with ''[[simile]]'', ''[[metaphor]]'', ''[[metonymy]]'', etc. True oxymoron is relatively rare; one well-known example occurs in [[Tennyson]]'s ''Idylls of the King:'' | In the past, rhetoric and elocution were standard school subjects and students were taught long lists of technical names of figures of speech and their meaning. ''Oxymoron'' was one of these, along with ''[[simile]]'', ''[[metaphor]]'', ''[[metonymy]]'', etc. True oxymoron is relatively rare; one well-known example occurs in [[Tennyson]]'s ''Idylls of the King:'' |