&gt;<i>The situation of &quot;ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife&quot; is not &quot;deliberately contrary&quot; to &quot;what one expects&quot;. It may be contrary to what one wants...but that&#x27;s not the same thing...otherwise, virtually every disappointment in life could be described as &quot;ironic&quot;.</i><p>If you found a couple of spoons when you searched for a knife, that would be merely frustrating (&quot;damn, where&#x27;s a knife when you need it?&quot;). It&#x27;s also close to what you&#x27;d deliberately expect (&quot;I either find some knife, or I find some other cutlery but no knife&quot;).<p>Getting 10,000 of them but no fucking knife is not just frustrating but also ironic -- and outside of expectations.<p>It agrees to a T with:<p>&quot;a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result&quot;<p>One would expect to either find the knife, or find a some other cutlery but no knife.<p>Chancing upon 10,000 cutlery items and ALL of them being spoons --just the kind you don&#x27;t need-- seems both &quot;deliberately contrary to what one expects&quot; and &quot;wryly amusing&quot;.<p>(Note that it doesn&#x27;t have to BE &quot;deliberately contrary&quot; -- just to &quot;seem&quot; so, e.g. as when you feel that luck or the universe conspires against you).