Oxymora

A man walks into a drug store and asks the pharmacist, "Do you have any acetylsalicylic acid?"
"You mean aspirin?" asked the pharmacist.
"That's it, I can never remember that word."

There are lots of long words in English that the Plain English campaigners would like to get rid of. This page shows a few phrases that we use every day, without realising how nonsensical they are. We call these terms 'oxymora'.

An oxymoron is a contradiction in terms, such as "a deafening silence". Here are a few more, with the odd sarcastic crypto-contradiction (non-oxymoron) thrown in for fun.