We consider a floating or submerged body in deep water translating parallel to the undisturbed free surface with a steady velocity U while undergoing small oscillations at frequency ω. It is known that for a single source, the solution becomes singular at the resonant frequency given by τ ≡ Uω/g=¼, where g is the gravitational acceleration. In this paper, we show that for a general body, a finite solution exists as τ → ¼ if and only if a certain geometric condition (which depends only on the frequency ω but not on U) is satisfied. For a submerged body, a necessary and sufficient condition is that the body must have non-zero volume. For a surface-piercing body, a sufficient condition is derived which has a geometric interpretation similar to that of John (1950). As an illustration, we provide an analytic (closed-form) solution for the case of a submerged circular cylinder oscillating near τ = ¼. Finally, we identify the underlying difficulties of existing approximate theories and numerical computations near τ = ¼, and offer a simple remedy for the latter.