Sarcasm: Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain - Sarcastic Quotes
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Sarcasm

Deriving from a Greek word meaning “to strip off the flesh,” sarcasm is caustic, cutting humor in the form of ironic praise, or speaking oppositely in order to wound.

Sarcasm

Irony

Comic irony is speaking with a veiled meaning or an intended meaning that is opposite to or different from your words, aka dry humor. Sarcasm is a form of comic irony.

Irony

Satire

Described by literary theorist Northrop Frye as “militant irony,” satire is irony writ large, social criticism that may or may not use humor to make its point.

Satire

Banter

A playfully clever or teasing conversation featuring spontaneous and usually rapid joking. Unlike sarcasm, banter is typically friendly and good humored.

Banter

Cynicism

The Cynics, named for the Greek word for dog, were philosophers advocating virtue and self-sufficiency above all. Cynicism later came to mean jaded or scornfully negative.

Cynicism

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Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony is contingent upon a third party witnessing the actions of others and interpreting them as ironic, thus you see it most regularly in artistic productions. Dramatic irony is a big bundle of miscommunication, manufactured by a character or circumstance clandestine to another character, and revealed to the audience. Having this type of concealed action be available to the audience gives it the ability to know more than what certain characters know. The ideas of being unbeknownst and under the wrong impression are ideas that surround dramatic irony. It is the disconnect, or the contrast between what the character says, thinks, or does and the true situation that is being faced. Often times, the character, or characters, cannot see or understand the contrast, but the audience or reader can. For example, in Othello, Othello addresses Iago as "honest Iago." Of course, Othello does not know that Iago is the conniving villain who leads him to believe through trickery and deception that Othello's wife, Desdemona has been unfaithful. The audience has witnessed Iago's high jinks in a way Othello cannot, since he has not been "watching" the rest of the play as the audience has. For this, Othello unjustly kills his wife, believing the whole time in Iago's honesty, which makes this instance in literature both an act of dramatic irony and an act the leads to tragic irony.

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No, That's Not Ironic!

Once in a while (actually, it happens quite often) one runs across a coworker, acquaintance, or total stranger who uses words without knowing what they actually mean. For example, one time I had a supervisor who laughed at a coworker who was not familiar with the frescos of the Sistine Chapel. In breaking the news to this coworker, he said, "How can you not know what the Sixteenth Chapel is?". At first I couldn't believe my ears, but I composed myself, and tried to confirm what my ears had heard. So I asked him to repeat the name of the fresco. This time he deliberately pronounced each syllable slowly so that I could really learn; "It's the Sixteenth Chapel", he said.

Now what does the above story have to do with irony, you ask? Well, read the How to Recognize Irony tutorial to understand.