Sarcasm is a form of ironic speech or writing which is bitter or cutting, being intended to taunt its target. It is first recorded in English in The Shepheardes Calender in 1579:
It comes from the ancient Greek sa????? (sarkazo) meaning 'to tear flesh' but the ancient Greek word for the rhetorical concept of taunting was instead ??e?asµ?? (chleyasm?s). Sarcasm appears several times in the Old Testament, for example:
Hostile, critical comments may be expressed in an ironic way such as saying "don't work too hard" to a lazy worker.
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Quotations
Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on earth tolerable.
Sarcasm is my mind's immune response to stupidity.
Sarcasm is the language of the devil, for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
Sarcasm is the protest of people who are weak.It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak, p. 22.
Encyclopedia
Sarcasm is a form of ironic speech or writing which is bitter or cutting, being intended to taunt its target. It is first recorded in English in The Shepheardes Calender in 1579:
It comes from the ancient Greek sa????? (sarkazo) meaning 'to tear flesh' but the ancient Greek word for the rhetorical concept of taunting was instead ??e?asµ?? (chleyasm?s). Sarcasm appears several times in the Old Testament, for example:
Hostile, critical comments may be expressed in an ironic way such as saying "don't work too hard" to a lazy worker. The use of irony introduces an element of humour which may make the criticism seem more polite and less aggressive but understanding the subtlety of this usage requires second-order interpretation of the speaker's intentions. This sophisticated understanding is lacking in people with brain damage, dementia, autism and this perception has been located by MRI in the right parahippocampal gyrus.
In certain Ethiopic languages, sarcasm is indicated with a sarcasm mark, a character that looks like a backwards question mark at the end of a sentence, similar to Alcanter de Brahm's proposed irony mark. Subtitles, such as in Teletext, sometimes use an exclamation mark in brackets to mark sarcasm: (!).
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