3 uses
- This wide national life is based entirely on emphasis,—the emphasis of want, which urges it into all the activities necessary for the maintenance of good society and light irony; it spends its heavy years often in a chill, uncarpeted fashion, amidst family discord unsoftened by long corridors.4.3 — Book 4 Chapter 3 — A Voice from the Past (80% in)
- In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt to fall into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being the tone of good society, where principles and beliefs are not only of an extremely moderate kind, but are always presupposed, no subjects being eligible but such as can be touched with a light and graceful irony.4.3 — Book 4 Chapter 3 — A Voice from the Past (77% in)
- But good society, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very expensive production; requiring nothing less than a wide and arduous national life condensed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, hammering, weaving under more or less oppression of carbonic acid, or else, spread over sheepwalks, and scattered in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or chalky corn-lands, where the rainy days look dreary.4.3 — Book 4 Chapter 3 — A Voice from the Past (78% in)
There are no more uses of "irony" in The Mill on the Floss.
Typical Usage
(best examples)