The conditions for verbal irony comprehension implicitly or directly claimed as necessary by all of the recent philosophic, linguistic and psycholinguistic theories of verbal irony were experimentally tested. Allusion to a violation of expectations, predictions, desires, preferences, social norms, etc., was confirmed as a necessary condition, but pragmatic insincerity was not. Pragmatically sincere comments can be comprehended ironically. A revised set of conditions was proposed, involving intentional violation of Gricean conversational maxims and the portrayal of a contrast between expectations and (...) reality. A cautionary note was made, however, regarding the viability of a single account of verbal irony comprehension. (shrink)