conceal. Antonyms: reveal, manifest, exhibit, avow, confess, expose, promulgate, publish, divulge. Synonyms: hide, secrete, disguise, keep secret, dissemble, screen, suppress.

Antonyms: confined, low-pressure, nonaggressive, amicable, unaggressive. Synonyms: fast-growing(a), militant, strong-growing, war-ridden, warring, belligerent.

bellicose

• aggressive.
• antagonistic.
• argumentative.
• battleful.
• combative.
• hostile.
• pugnacious.
• quarrelsome.

Today, passive-aggressive is also used in everyday conversation to refer to a tendency some people have toward a less direct style of communication, especially communication that may create conflict. Some potential synonyms for this kind of behavior are negativistic, apathetic, petulant, or snide.

Along with these synonymous phrases, the term passive aggression is an oxymoron. Passive aggression is often motivated by a person’s fear of expressing anger directly. The passive-aggressive person believes life will only get worse if other people know of his anger, so he expresses anger indirectly.

You don’t call someone an oxymoron; it’s not a personal characteristic; it’s a figure of speech (or writing). You might say “deafening silence” or “oddly normal” or “jumbo shrimp” are oxymorons, because they appear to be contradictory but in fact they make an intriguing kind of sense.

paradoxnoun. A person or thing having contradictory properties. He is a paradox; you would not expect him in that political party.

An oxymoron (usual plural oxymorons, more rarely oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposing meanings within a word or phrase that creates an ostensible self-contradiction. An oxymoron can be used as a rhetorical device to illustrate a rhetorical point or to reveal a paradox.

paradox/ oxymoron An oxymoron is a figure of speech — words that seem to cancel each other out, like “working vacation” or “instant classic.” Both are contradictions, but a paradox is something to think on, and an oxymoron is a description, enjoyed in the moment then gone.

synonyms

synonymous

Colloquialism or colloquial language is the linguistic style used for casual communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversation and other informal contexts. The most common term used in dictionaries to label such an expression is colloquial.