A description of what is strange or funny because things happen which turn out to be the opposite of what a person expects to happen: Mike and Mildred were ironically confronted with having plenty of money for food, but they couldn't buy it because the restaurant didn't have any table available for them.

One ironically disturbing experience was when my neighbor Alfred, who had been poor all his life, inherited a fortune after becoming too old and too ill to enjoy it. Such a situation may be characterized as "the irony of fate", or "one of life's little ironies" and here the word "little" is itself being used ironically.