ironic

As seen in a Cracked's 9 Words That Don't Mean What You Think.

Awesome.

For reference, once Wikipedia was back up again, I concluded that it was not ironic :)

"A traffic jam when you're already late
A 'no smoking' sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic...dontcha think
A little too ironic...and yeah I really do think..."

Despite what the song says, rain on your wedding day, or a free ride when you've already paid, is not ironic. It sucks, but it's not ironic.

Let's play a game. Count the number of times irony is used on this site. First one to spot it 10 times wins a prize.

For something to be ironic, it must be both coincidental and paradoxical (or at the very least counterintuitive). Not just coincidental or even coincidental and unfortunate. To say, "Ironically, we arrived at the same time," would be incorrect unless, perhaps, both of you left from the same point at the same time but one of you headed West by donkey and the other traveled by plane, heading East.

Personally, I like an element of poetic justice as well. So, if the donkey rider also sat atop an animal named "Glider" and the plane passenger had acted like an ass, well, that's ironic.

I'm pretty sure that us being the first people to argue about the definition of irony on this site makes us heroes of pedantry. :D

If he were going to the store to buy milk, riding a milk-powered car and eating milksicles then I'd say sure, it'd be ironic. Because there's an abundance of milk in the context. Just as this guy was looking for irony but was rendered unable to by a force which may or may not be ironic. That is, his not getting to the page isn't ironic, but his continued confusion because of his inability to access the page is.

The section on the page that talks about comic irony also has some similar uses.
"...an ironic situation might involve getting hit by a rib-delivery truck after trying to poison someone with bad rib-sauce in order to steal his or her gems,"
"...a hapless cat is trapped against an inside house window, having to watch the once-in-a-lifetime consequences of a collison outside between a truck labeled "Al's Rodents," and another labeled "Ernie's Small, Flightless Birds.""

There is a sharp incongruity between expecting to look something up on Wikipedia and Wikipedia being down? The universe was really mocking ZoFreX because Wikipedia wasn't working? Under this definition, "I went to the store to buy some milk, but they were out" is ironic, which just doesn't work for me.

I'd argue it fell under the category of cosmic irony. From the aforementioned Wikipedia page:

"Cosmic irony is a sharp incongruity between our expectation of an outcome and what actually occurs, as if the universe were mocking us."

It isn't at all ironic, under any definition of irony that I've ever heard.

<@ZoFreX> goddammit
<@ZoFreX> I forgot the definition of irony
<@ZoFreX> so I went to look it up on Wikipedia
<@ZoFreX> but Wikipedia is down
<@ZoFreX> AND I DON'T KNOW WHETHER THAT'S IRONIC OR NOT