Sarcasm

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Sarcasm is sneering, jesting, or mocking a person, situation or thing. It is strongly associated with irony, with some definitions classifying it as a type of verbal irony intended to insult or wound^[1] -- stating the opposite of the intended meaning, e.g. using "that's amazing" to mean "that's awful". It is used in a humorous manner, often harshly, and is expressed through vocal intonations such as over-emphasizing the actual statement or particular words. Use of sarcasm is sometimes viewed as an expression of concealed anger^[2].

1 Origins
2 Sarcasm in written communication
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Origins

The word comes from the late Latin word, sarcasmus, which, in turn, comes from the Greek sarkasmos, from sarkazein - to bite the lips in rage,- from sarx, sark-, flesh - the root word literally means "to cut a piece of flesh (from the targeted person)."

Sarcasm is proverbially described as “the lowest form of humor but the highest form of wit” (a quotation sometimes ascribed to Oscar Wilde, but untraceable).

[edit] Sarcasm in written communication

Because it is vocally oriented, sarcasm can be difficult to grasp in written form and is easily misinterpreted. To prevent this some people end sarcastic comments on the Internet with an emoticon, emphasize words with italics, bold, and/or underlining (e.g. That's just great), or surround them with a made-up markup language tag, e.g. *sarcasm*, <sarcasm> or <snicker>.

Another transformation of sarcasm into electronic media is only possible through written language. Using extremely poor typing in a sentence, one can indicate that the holder of a certain opinion is unintelligent or overly eager. For example: “steam roxz0rz teh big one!11!eleven!1!” This written slang is especially popular in Internet forums. Sarcasm is also achievable through written language by using capitalization to emphasize certain words. For example: “Well isn’t THAT just fantastic.”

In the UK and some other countries, writing has adopted the use of (!) (an exclamation mark in parentheses) following speech in which sarcasm or irony is perceptible via the tone of voice, a punctuation mark which is very regularly seen in subtitles.