IRONY: The incongruity (disconnect) between what is expected and what really happens

Satire is a part of irony, especially Verbal Irony  When the speaker says, "I appreciate your help.", when no help was provided to the speaker, makes that comment sarcastic.  Hyperbole (overstatement) - "There was never anyone as brilliant." In describing someone who is a moron.  Understatement - When the speaker says, "It was a bit cold.", when he has lost a leg due to frost bite.

Situational irony

 Example of situational irony — the juxtaposition of the sign and its surroundings is unexpected.  Situational irony occurs when the results of a situation are far different from what was expected. This results in a feeling of surprise due to the odd situation.

Examples  A shipboard scene of hope for a couple ends with the camera pulling back to reveal a life preserver stenciled “RMS Titanic.”  A situation immortalized in O. Henry's story The Gift of the Magi, in which a young couple is too poor to buy each other Christmas gifts. The man finally pawns his heirloom pocket watch to buy his wife a set of combs for her long, prized, beautiful hair. She, meantime, cuts her hair to sell to a wigmaker for money to buy her husband a watch-chain. The irony is two-fold: the couple, having parted with their tangible valuables, is caused by the act to discover the richness of the intangible.  A man goes over a giant waterfall in a barrel and survives, only to take a cleanup shower where he slips on the soap and dies from trauma and drowning.  An anti-capitalist website sells anti-capitalism t-shirts for a sweet profit.

Cosmic Irony The expression “irony of fate” stems from the notion that the gods (or the Fates) are amusing themselves by toying with the minds of mortals, with deliberate ironic intent. It arises from sharp contrasts between human intentions and actual results. Minor examples are daily life situations such as the rain that sets in immediately after one finishes washing the car, destroying its cleanliness. A major example would be: Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.

Examples  The artist Monet's loss of vision, but not hearing.  Ludwig van Beethoven’s loss of hearing, but not vision.  Mr. Hessee nearly getting in an auto accident while attempting to buckle his seatbelt.  American astronaut Gus Grissom's death inside Apollo 1 may have been partly because of a spacecraft redesign that he had recommended after the Mercury-Redstone 4 mission. After a Mercury hatch opened prematurely, nearly causing his death, Grissom had recommended the Apollo hatch be made more difficult to open. The new hatch proved too difficult to open.  At the turn of the 19th century, Charles Justice, a prison inmate at the Ohio State Penitentiary, devised an idea to improve the efficiency of the restraints on the electric chair. After a parole, he was convicted in a robbery/murder and returned to prison 13 years later under a death sentence. On November 9, 1911, he was electrocuted in the same electric chair that he had helped to improve.

IRONY or NOT?  A woman lost money in the stock market even though she was convinced that her stocks would make her money.  Ms. Schwab wrote one of her students a note telling him to fix his terrible grammer.  An old man kills his neighbor, steals his lottery ticket and winds up winning the jackpot only to die from a heart attack upon hearing the news.

 Rain on your wedding day  The time you arrived at school late on the day when you were supposed to hand in an essay and the car broke down.  I once saw a random dog walking by and it looks sadly at me after I had left my house without patting my own dog first.  A no smoking sign on your cigarette break.  At a special ceremony, two animals saved from an oil spill were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later they were both eaten by a killer whale.