oxymoron

1. (rhetoric) A figure of speech in which two words or phrases with opposing meanings are used together intentionally for effect.Examples: "In Oxymoron jarring phrases join And terms opposed in harmony combine."; "For Theodor Adorno and his colleagues at the Frankfurt School who coined the term, "culture industry" was an oxymoron, intended to set up a critical contrast between the exploitative, repetitive mode of industrial mass production under capitalism and the associations of transformative power and aesthetico-moral transcendence that the concept of culture carried in the 1940s, when it still meant "high" culture."rhetoric

2. (loosely, sometimes proscribed) A contradiction in terms.Examples: "During the past few years, some 200 class-action suits have been filed against food manufacturers, charging them with misuse of the adjective in marketing such edible oxymorons as “natural” Cheetos Puffs, “all-natural” Sun Chips, “all-natural” Naked Juice, “100 percent all-natural” Tyson chicken nuggets and so forth."; "“Stable inflation is an oxymoron because it means it’s not stable,” Shelton told CNN in a recent interview."broadlyproscribedsometimes