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Gibson's law: "For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD." Ginsberg's theorem is a set of adages based on the laws of thermodynamics. Gloger's rule, an ecogeographical rule which states: within a species of endotherms, more heavily pigmented forms tend to be found in more humid environments. It was coined by Constantin Wilhelm Lambert ...
Antiphrasis is the rhetorical device of saying the opposite of what is actually meant in such a way that it is obvious what the true intention is. [1] Some authors treat and use antiphrasis just as irony, euphemism or litotes. [2] When the antiphrasal use is very common, the word can become an auto-antonym, [3] having opposite meanings ...
Murphy's law [a] is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.".. Though similar statements and concepts have been made over the course of history, the law itself was coined by, and named after, American aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr.; its exact origins are debated, but it is generally agreed it originated from Murphy and his team ...
Apophasis (/ ə ˈ p ɒ f ə s ɪ s /; from Ancient Greek ἀπόφασις (apóphasis), from ἀπόφημι (apóphemi) 'to say no') [1] [2] is a rhetorical device wherein the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up. [3]
For example, the phrase, "John, my best friend" uses the scheme known as apposition. Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men").
Example 3. In other cases it may simply be unclear which is the cause and which is the effect. For example: Children that watch a lot of TV are the most violent. Clearly, TV makes children more violent. This could easily be the other way round; that is, violent children like watching more TV than less violent ones. Example 4
The adage's converse, "bad law makes hard cases", has also been used. [7] [8] [9]In his discussion of the converse, the jurist John Chipman Gray saw legal professionals as subject to the temptation of valuing the "logical coherency of the system itself" over the well-being of individuals. [10]
The term antonym (and the related antonymy) is commonly taken to be synonymous with opposite, but antonym also has other more restricted meanings. Graded (or gradable) antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous spectrum (hot, cold).