For the punk band, see Oxymoron (band). For the album by rapper Schoolboy Q, see Oxymoron (album). An oxymoron (usual plural oxymorons, more rarely oxymora) is a rhetorical device that uses an ostensible self-contradiction to illustrate a rhetorical point or to reveal a paradox. A more general meaning of contradiction in terms (not necessarily for rhetoric effect) is recorded by the OED for 1902.