6.2.3. Oxymoron
Oxymoron(5) is a combination of two words (mostly an adjective and a noun or an adverb with an adjective) in which the meanings of the two clash, being opposite in sense:
'low skyscraper', 'sweet sorrow', 'nice rascal', 'pleasantly ugly face', 'horribly beautiful', 'a deafening silence'.
In the primary meaning of the qualifying word changes or weakens, the stylistic effect of oxymoron is lost. This is the case with what were once oxymoronic combinations, for example, 'awfully nice", 'awfully glad', 'terribly sorry’ and the like, where the words awfully and terribly have lost their primary logical meaning and are now used with emotive meaning only, as intensifies. The essence of oxymoron consists in the capacity of the primary meaning of the adjective or adverb to resist for some time the overwhelming power of semantic change which words undergo in combination. The forcible combination of non-combinative words seems to develop what may be called a kind of centrifugal force which keeps them apart, in contrast to ordinary word-combinations where centripetal force is in action.
In oxymoron the logical meaning holds fast, because there is no true word-combination, only the juxtaposition of two non-combinative words. The logical meaning is easily perceived unlike the emotive one.
"I despise its very vastness and power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the haughtiest beggars, the plainest beauties, the lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw."
Oxymoron has one main structural model; adjective + noun. It is in this structural model that the resistance of the two component parts to fusion into one unit manifests itself most strongly. In the adverb + adjective model the change of meaning in the first element, the adverb, is more rapid resistance to the unifying process not being so strong. "
"Two ordinary words may become almost new if they are joined for the first time or used in an unexpected context" ( Vinogradov).
Thus, 'peopled desert', 'populous solitude', 'proud humility" are oxymoronic.
The tendency to combine the uncombinative is revealed in structurally different forms, not in adjective-noun models.
"Fair Greece! sad relic of departed Worth! Immortal, though no more, though fallen, great!"
Oxymoronic relations in the italicized part can scarcely be felt, but still the contrary signification is clearly perceived. Such structures may be looked upon as intermediate between oxymoron and antithesis.