On Tue, 25 Feb 2003 Gaertk at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/25/2003 2:02:03 AM Eastern Standard > Time, rone at ennui.org (circadian rhyme) writes: > > > Philip Hart writes: > >> Dude, irony alert. > > > > To be fair, this is one of the few times i wasn't being > > ironic. > > It is only fitting that so many people (including Vlad) > misuse the word "irony". See also the word that is always > spelled "wrong". I would say it's ironic that prescriptivists say that the way a large majority of people use the word "irony" is wrong, but I'm not a descriptivist. It's not clear to me what Rone was being - I didn't think he was ignorant of the quote, though, hence the irony of Mark's earnest instruction. If Rone was playing ignorant to make a point, his statement comes under the definition of Socratic irony. (Incidentally I think it's ironic or "ironic" that Socrates attacked the sophists but relied on sophistic, straw-man arguments to make his case. Anyway that's how it seemed to me back when I tried to read the "Dialogues".)