The DICT Development Group

  Irony \I"ron*y\, n. [L. ironia, Gr. ? dissimulation, fr. ? a
     dissembler in speech, fr. ? to speak; perh. akin to E. word:
     cf. F. ironie.]
     [1913 Webster]
     1. Dissimulation; ignorance feigned for the purpose of
        confounding or provoking an antagonist.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. A sort of humor, ridicule, or light sarcasm, which adopts
        a mode of speech the meaning of which is contrary to the
        literal sense of the words.
        [1913 Webster]

  Irony \I"ron*y\, a. [From Iron.]
     [1913 Webster]
     1. Made or consisting of iron; partaking of iron; iron; as,
        irony chains; irony particles; -- In this sense iron is
        the more common term. [R.] --Woodward.
        [1913 Webster +PJC]
  
     2. Resembling iron in taste, hardness, or other physical
        property.
        [1913 Webster]

  irony
      n 1: witty language used to convey insults or scorn; "he used
           sarcasm to upset his opponent"; "irony is wasted on the
           stupid"; "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do
           generally discover everybody's face but their own"--
           Jonathan Swift [syn: sarcasm, irony, satire, caustic
           remark]
      2: incongruity between what might be expected and what actually
         occurs; "the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most
         hated"
      3: a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected
         and what occurs

  76 Moby Thesaurus words for "irony":
     Atticism, Janus, agile wit, ambiguity, ambiguousness, ambivalence,
     amphibology, antinomy, biformity, bifurcation, black humor,
     burlesque, caricature, causticity, comedy, complexity of meaning,
     conjugation, cynicism, dichotomy, double entendre, double meaning,
     double reference, doubleness, doublethink, doubling, dry wit,
     dualism, duality, duplexity, duplication, duplicity, equivocacy,
     equivocality, equivocalness, equivocation, esprit, farce, halving,
     humor, innuendo, invective, lampoon, levels of meaning,
     multivocality, nimble wit, oxymoron, pairing, paradox, parody,
     paronomasia, pleasantry, polarity, polysemousness, polysemy,
     pretty wit, punning, quick wit, ready wit, richness of meaning,
     salt, sarcasm, satire, satiric wit, savor of wit,
     self-contradiction, slapstick, slapstick humor, squib, subtle wit,
     travesty, twinning, two-facedness, twoness, uncertainty,
     visual humor, wit
  
  

  IRONY, rhetoric. A term derived from the Greek, which signifies 
  dissimulation. It is a refined species of ridicule, which, under the mask of 
  honest simplicity or ignorance, exposes the faults and errors of others, by 
  seeming to adopt or defend them. 
       2. In libels, irony may convey imputations more effectually than direct 
  assertion, and render the publication libelous. Hob. 215; Hawk. B. 1, c. 73, 
  s. 4; 3 Chit. Cr. Law, 869, Bac. Ab. Libel, A 3.