Dramatic irony is frequently contrasted with verbal irony. The former is embedded in a work’s structure, whereas the latter typically operates at the level of words and sentences that are understood by audiences or readers to carry meanings different from the words themselves when interpreted literally. (Sarcasm can be considered a form of verbal irony.) Dramatic irony is also sometimes equated with tragic irony, situational irony, or structural irony; all those terms are also sometimes understood to exist within a hierarchy that establishes narrow differences of meaning among themselves.
a literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character.
