1 : "when sumpthing is assumed to occur, but the opposite does..."
2 : 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
3 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 utterance
4 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
synonym see WIT