Shortly afterward, two Baltimore newspapers published it, and by mid-October it had appeared in at least seventeen other papers in cities up and down the East Coast. A local printer issued the new song as a broadside. Back in Baltimore, he completed the four verses (PDF) and copied them onto a sheet of paper, probably making more than one copy. Inspired by the sight of the American flag flying over Fort McHenry the morning after the bombardment, he scribbled the initial verse of his song on the back of a letter. Rather, that it was too clever for the speaker’s admiration, and invited derision instead.Francis Scott Key was a gifted amateur poet. For example, it is not meant that Paul Ryan’s jab was not actually clever. When sarcasm is used, note that it does not mean a negation of the fact, only a negation of the speaker’s admiration for it. The speaker is definitely touched/moved.Īll your examples, except the first, are without any sarcasm, just emotion. The expression, in normal terms, just means an sigh, admiring/lamenting something for being “very” (adjective) such as “My little nephew is oh so cute”. I would say the use of the expression in your examples is one of derision, not directly sarcasm. The headline should be interpreted as: Ryan made a pointed comment about Cutler that was so clever it made me gasp. In this context, the use of "oh-so-clever" in Seifert's headline is not in the least sarcastic - it's entirely factual. Ryan himself was using verbal irony - defined by Abrams and Hartman as "a statement in which the meaning that a speaker employs is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed" - and his comment about four quarters of strong performance was particularly clever, since this was ostensibly about a financial year divided into four quarters, but a savvy audience would see the allusion to four quarters of a football game. "That wasn't another Jay Cutler joke, I swear. "I'm here to talk about the economy today - about the need to getįour quarters of strong, consistent performance. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, I stand ready toĭo whatever it takes to help you re-sign Jay Cutler. Gracious of you to host me, even though I'm a Packers fan and I assume "I want to thank you all for inviting me to speak. Which he apparently embellished a bit during the actual speech. The Washington Examiner has the full text of Ryan's prepared remarks, Government's budget battle, and on Monday he couldn't resist a shot atīears quarterback Jay Cutler during a speech to the Economic Club of Ryan has gained a bit of fame recently during the federal Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who is also the House Budget CommitteeĬhairman. What I will do, however, is draw your attention to noted funnyman Paul The body of the article explains the context: The expression "Paul Ryan's oh-so-clever jab at Jay Cutler" was the headline of an NFL (American football) article by sports journalist Kevin Seifert. Let's have a look at the first example in particular, where the confusion may lie in failing to differentiate the description of Ryan's jab from the actual jab (the pointed comment) itself. In each case, "oh-so-" is used in a straightforward way to intensify the following word. None of the examples given in the question are sarcastic in tone. "You have been working hard," he said with heavy sarcasm, as he looked at the empty page. Made in order to hurt someone's feelings or to criticize something in The use of remarks that clearly mean the opposite of what they say, This is not the case - at least, it's no more true than the use of "very" or any other intensifier. Does it indicate sarcasm?Ī number of answers have suggested that the addition "oh-so-" is often used in a sarcastic context. We would therefore interpret oh-so-lonely as something like "so lonely it made me sigh", and oh-so-clever as "so clever it made me gasp". The "oh" in the expression gives the added sense of a sigh or gasp (depending on context), heightening the emotional content of the expression. However, the idiomatic addition of oh enables so to be used attributively (though why, I'm not sure!): "the oh so clever joke." So is itself an intensifier, but it can normally only be used predicatively - "that joke was so clever" but not "the so clever joke". The expression "oh-so-" is an intensifier, a linguistic term for a modifier that "serves to enhance and give additional emotional context to the word it modifies".
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