Mood:  a-ok

Neatorama has a neat little post on Words that Changed Their Meanings.  Of course I was especially interested in the treatment given to irony.  Having grown up with teachers whose proclivities for uber correct language had shades of Mrs. Tingle, I have had it drilled into me what irony is not, but never explained to me what irony is.  As a result I steer clear of the word at all costs.  So of course, I had never heard of definition number one, but I'm sure I have done it a few times.

IRONY:

1: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called also Socratic irony

2 a: the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b: a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c: an ironic expression or utterance3 a (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity b: incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony tragic irony (Meriam-Websters)