Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Oxy- and Other Morons

A student is struggling with his analysis of a poem.

Student: "A silent music, a loud silence". . . Erm. . . That's . . . Er. . . an . . .

Me: Oxymoron.

Student: What did you just call me?!?

Me: No, it's a figure of speech.

Student: Well, it may be a figure of speech but it's still offensive.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That reminded me of this.

-Mike

Vertigo said...

This one made me laughed... even though it must have been awkward for everyone.

Pagan Topologist said...

I once had a student tell me I was being offensive when I told her that freshmen usually had difficulty with a particular course because of the required mathematical maturity. She felt that singling out freshmen in this way was wrong.

geo said...

Hey, when I was coming of age in the late '60's and then early 70's everyone else was saying:

"Right On Brother!" and similar.

To me they just said: "More On!