Oxymoron Worksheets

An oxymoron puts two words with opposite meanings side by side, and the phrase still makes sense. Jumbo shrimp are very big shrimp, even though "shrimp" usually means something small. A small crowd is a crowd with only a few people in it. A deafening silence is a quiet so complete that everyone notices it, and something bittersweet makes you feel happy and sad at the same time.

Writers use oxymorons to show that something is two things at once, or to surprise the reader and make a line memorable. Once children know the trick, they start spotting oxymorons everywhere: awfully good soup, a seriously funny comic, an original copy of a drawing, an open secret that everybody already knows.

These printable pages start with an anchor chart of common oxymorons and what they mean. Children then circle the oxymoron in a sentence, decide whether a pair of words is an oxymoron or not, choose what an oxymoron means from the clues around it, match oxymorons to their meanings, and sort oxymorons from hyperboles and similes. Writing pages ask them to use oxymorons in their own sentences and to invent new ones.

For 5th grade, an original story about a girl's last day before her family moves is full of oxymorons, with questions that ask what each one means and how it shows her feelings. A second page asks children to explain why each phrase is an oxymoron and what it really means. Every practice page has an answer key.