It’s my favorite scene in Reality Bites when Winona Ryder is asked by potential employer Candace Bergen to define irony. She says it’s when something is, you know, ironic. When she relays the awfulness of her peril to Ethan Hawke has harbors no empathy. She tests him to define it, and he nails it: when the actual meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning.

Confirming this memory led me down a rabbit hole to this fun essay:

http://thenervousbreakdown.com/ssparshott/2010/06/irony-man/