How to Use dramatic irony in a Sentence

dramatic irony

noun
  • This scene is tinged with an aura of dread and dramatic irony.
    — refinery29.com, 30 May 2018
  • Even at this early point in the novel, the pages feel damp with dramatic irony.
    — Ron Charles, Twin Cities, 4 Aug. 2019
  • Beliefs espoused in youth gain dramatic irony from the vantage of old age.
    — Alice Gregory, The New Yorker, 9 Nov. 2020
  • That slight moment of textbook dramatic irony has haunted me for years.
    — TheWeek, 12 July 2020
  • This is dramatic irony, and a call-back to the use of the song at the very end of the original series.
    — Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 9 Dec. 2021
  • Think of it as the internet’s version of dramatic irony.
    — Hanna Wickes, Charlotte Observer, 6 Apr. 2026
  • And that dramatic irony furnishes a lot of the jokes in Good Boys.
    — Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, 16 Aug. 2019
  • As a master of dramatic irony, this is a twist of fate that Mank himself would have relished.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 26 Apr. 2021
  • Well, his appearance gives the season’s ending a big hit of dramatic irony.
    — Sarah Shachat, IndieWire, 17 July 2024
  • Then there's the mission's conclusion, which includes a brand-new dose of dramatic irony.
    — Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 6 Apr. 2020
  • That disconnect is a kind of internal dramatic irony, where a part of us knows something another part does not.
    — Emily Dreyfuss, WIRED, 4 June 2019
  • Plus, all sorts of things go on the audience will never know, lending dramatic irony to what’s actually heard.
    — John Timpane, Philly.com, 13 Jan. 2018
  • The genius dramatic irony here, as loyal viewers know, is that Úrsula has a target on her back.
    — Laura Zornosa, Time, 25 Oct. 2022
  • Ultimately, these emails — like any ancient corporate emails — are best read with an eye toward dramatic irony.
    — Casey Newton, The Verge, 6 Dec. 2018
  • Critics often note Ishiguro’s use of dramatic irony, which allows readers to know more than his characters do.
    — Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, 2 Mar. 2021
  • Meanwhile, there was a strange pathos to Matt’s predicament, a dramatic irony in the discord between what had unfolded onscreen and off.
    — Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 16 Mar. 2021
  • The shiniest pieces in Heads of the Colored People are master classes in dramatic irony.
    — Brittany Allen, Longreads, 24 May 2018
  • Fad tries to shoot Jet, but in a nice little bit of dramatic irony, Jet uses his fake arm to block the bullet and shoots Fad instead.
    — Scott Meslow, Vulture, 20 Nov. 2021
  • If anything, Far from Home could have been that much more fun with viewers sinking their teeth into a collective sense of dramatic irony from the get-go.
    — Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 1 July 2019
  • The ultimate, savage dramatic irony—the fate that the audience knows but the characters cannot—is foreshadowed in the play’s name.
    — The Economist, 13 Feb. 2020
  • The film’s most powerful narrative device is a near-continuous deployment of this type of dramatic irony.
    — Kevin Dettmar, The New Yorker, 23 Mar. 2022
  • The pandemic has also revealed the inherent dramatic irony in trying to fit an art form defined by live performance on Zoom.
    — Harry Bruinius, The Christian Science Monitor, 17 Sep. 2020
  • In Magma, though, the cumulative effect of many such self-recriminations is a sense of dramatic irony.
    — Brandon Taylor, Vulture, 5 Aug. 2021
  • In a world ruled by dramatic ironies observed by athletes of perception, to use one of Stone’s key phrases, the agents of goodness and mercy are few, and nature is no help at all.
    — Charles Baxter, Harper's Magazine, 30 Mar. 2020
  • In this series, though, the humor is mostly in the vein of flat dramatic irony, using the past to make completely superficial observations about the present.
    — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Sep. 2023
  • Most thrillers either exploit the dramatic irony of us knowing more than them or concentrate on withholding information from the audience.
    — Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 26 July 2019
  • Blade of Dream retold the events of the first book through what readers might have written off as secondary characters, maintaining the dramatic irony throughout and building to a hell of a cliffhanger.
    — Literary Hub, 2 Jan. 2026
  • In a piece of tragically dramatic irony, after a lifetime of imposing his literary opinions on the world, Gilman was rendered unable to speak in his final years.
    — Eve Fairbanks, Washington Post, 14 Feb. 2023
  • In the process, the game leans heavily on dramatic irony, giving a winking nod to an audience that often knows the result and coming consequences of a scene before the characters involved.
    — Kyle Orland, Ars Technica, 12 June 2020
  • Amy's every interaction is loaded with dramatic irony, but the audience isn't in a good spot knowing that her teenage daughter actually hates her or that the new chief of internal medicine is a quack who killed a patient.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 8 Jan. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dramatic irony.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: