irony

n. sarcasm, speech or writing which is intended to communicate a meaning contrary to its literal sense; contrast between what is expected or desired and reality

Irony is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says and what is generally understood (either at the time, or in the later context of history). Irony may also arise from a discordance between acts and results, especially if it is striking, and seen by an outside audience. Irony is understood as an aesthetic evaluation by an audience, which relies on a sharp discordance between the real and the ideal, and which is variously applied to texts, speech, events, acts, and even fashion. All the different senses of irony revolve around the perceived notion of an incongruity, or a gap between an understanding of reality, or expectation of a reality, and what actually happens.
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Noun
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"--Johathan Swift
(synonym) sarcasm, satire, caustic remark
(hypernym) wit, humor, humour, witticism, wittiness
(attribute) sarcastic
2. incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs; "the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated"
(hypernym) incongruity, incongruousness
(hyponym) Socratic irony
3. a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs
(hypernym) trope, figure of speech, figure, image
(hyponym) dramatic irony
(part-meronym) antiphrasis
(class) pretty

(n.)
Dissimulation; ignorance feigned for the purpose of confounding or provoking an antagonist.
  

(n.)
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.
  

(a.)
Resembling iron taste, hardness, or other physical property.
  

(a.)
Made or consisting of iron; partaking of iron; iron; as, irony chains; irony particles.
  

Synonyms and related words:
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