A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist, humanely catching strays

The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective-noun combination of two words. For example, the following line from Tennyson's Idylls of the King contains two oxymora:

"And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."

Other examples of oxymora of this kind are:

• Dark light
• Living dead
• New Classic
• Old News
• Open secret (supposedly a secret but it has leaked)
• Vintage Modern

Less often seen are noun-verb combinations of two words, such as the line"The silence whistles" from Nathan Alterman's Summer Night, or in a record album title like Sounds of Silence.

Oxymorons are not always a pair of words; they can also be devised in the meaning of sentences or phrases.