A couple of years ago, I bought a Dell computer. Almost every day since then, I have received one or more spam emails from Dell offering to sell me something else. As I write, the latest one is titled: βWe have unreal deals. You only have three business days.β Why should Dell think I would be interested in an unreal deal? There used to be a saying that somebody or something was βthe real deal.β Now should we say instead βthe unreal dealβ? And if, as I suspect, βunrealβ is just an ironic superlativeβso good that it seems unreal, or too good to be trueβwhat then becomes of St. Anselmβs Ontological Proof of the existence of God, which holds that no Being with the attributes of God could exist without also having the attribute of reality? Maybe, on the contrary, God is all the more perfect for not being real, or not seeming so. But then it wasnβt long ago that a learned man told me Anselm had never proposed the Ontological Proof in the first place, so I guess that all such speculation is pretty unreal too.
Most examples of simple irony, such as the alleged use of βbadβ to mean good in youthful slang are easy enough to sort out. I donβt think I have ever heard it used so in the wild, as it were, but if I did I would expect the context to make it clear whether βbadβ meant bad or good. Iβm not