Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The rewarding of virtue and the punishment of vice, often in an especially appropriate or ironic manner.
Wiktionary
WordNet 3.0
- n. an outcome in which virtue triumphs over vice (often ironically)
Examples
“I suppose there was some poetic justice in the AVO’s founder occupying the cell next door to my father’s, a victim of Rakosi’s need for purges in the brief post-Stalinist “thaw.””
“Mr. Godwin, being a kind man and a good, took occasion to explain to them that Mr. Shelley was a married man, and although it was true he did not live on good terms with his wife, yet she was his lawful wife, and marriage was a sacred obligation: of course, pure philosophy or poetic justice took a different view, but in society the marriage-tie must not be held lightly.”
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slumry I know this word mainly in its ironic sense. Jun 17, 2007