Oxymoron/Talk

I removed "jumbo shrimp" and the comments someone added because this comes down to a US vs British usage dispute. A scan of american dictionaries indicates that they deem "Shrimp" meaning "small" to be informal. A scan of British disctionaries indicates that "shrimp" meaning small is the primary usage, and the usage as a crustacean is a secondary one. Hence it IS an oxymoron to half the English speaking world, and is perfectly sensible to the other half. Rather than get into a protracted and longwinded explanation of trans-atlantic/pacific English issues, it was easier to simply remove it, as losing it doesn't hurt the article at all.

well, *I* think of 'jumbo shrimp' as faintly humorous, and I'm an American. --MichaelTinkler

(I'm American). Whenever someone tells me they're a student teacher, I ask them if they like jumbo shrimp or if they used to work for military intelligence. --justfred

Are you sure this article isn't just a long stub? --The Epopt, defender of large crustaceans?

If you don't like the article, rewrite your own damn version, that's what the 'pedia is for. Quit whining about it here. - MMGB

Er, I think you'll find a long stub is an oxymoronic joke, Manning... sjc

Yeah, possibly, but I get so steamed when people write "this article is no good" comments in Talk sections, I'd rather they either improve it, give suggestions for improving it or shut the hell up. And I'm having a bad-sense-of-humour day, so maybe I'm being a weeny bit too terse. And another things, I really hate it when people put in opinions as facts. The plural of "oxymoron" is "oxymora". I checked 6 different dictionaries. Just because something thinks it should be "oxymorons" doesn't make it so. (later - OK, 1 dictionary gives "oxymorons" as an alternate, but that's the American Heritage Dictionary which is crap anyway. The others (OED. Websters etc) only give oxymora)- MMGB

Actually, I find American Heritage to be usually the best dictionary made for matters of usage, second only to OED. "Webster's" doesn't specify any particular dictionary because it isn't a trademark, but the one's made by Merriam-Webster company tend to be wimpily descriptivist. As you point out, though, even AH prefers the Latin plural. --LDC

The plural which people used in the article is oxymorons, which is why I tidied it up to reflect reality. I agree that the plural of oxymorons is oxymora. But 99 times out of a hundred if you ever see the plural written down it will be written oxymorons by people otherwise intelligent enough to get their heads around the concept. sjc