Idiom

An idiom (Latin: idioma, "special property", from Greek: ἰδίωμα – idíōma, "special feature, special phrasing, a peculiarity", f. Greek: ἴδιος – ídios, "one’s own") is a phrase or a fixed expression that has a figurative, or sometimes literal, meaning. An idiom's figurative meaning is different from the literal meaning. There are thousands of idioms, and they occur frequently in all languages. It is estimated that there are at least twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions in the English language. Idioms fall into the category of formulaic language.

Examples

The following sentences contain idioms. The fixed words constituting the idiom in each case are bolded:

Each of the word combinations in bold has at least two meanings: a literal meaning and a figurative meaning. Such expressions that are typical for a language can appear as words, combinations of words, phrases, entire clauses, and entire sentences.

Expressions such as these have figurative meaning. When one says "The devil is in the details", one is not expressing a belief in demons, but rather one means that things may look good on the surface, but upon scrutiny, undesirable aspects are revealed. Similarly, when one says "The early bird gets the worm", one is not suggesting that there is only one worm, rather one means there are plenty of worms, but for the sake of the idiom one plays along, and imagines that there is only one worm; alternatively, the figurative translation of this phrase is that the most attentive and astute individual, or perhaps the hardest working (or simply the first one) gets the desired outcome to a situation or the better product, depending on the context. On the other hand, "Waste not, want not" is completely devoid of a figurative meaning. It counts as an idiom, however, because it has a literal meaning and people keep saying it.

English

English may refer to:

SSC

SSC may refer to:

In arts and entertainment

Businesses

In education

Educational institutions

In Hong Kong

British English

British English is the English language as spoken and written in Great Britain or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles. Slight regional variations exist in formal, written English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland, whereas little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English. The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken, so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. According to Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English, British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions in the word British and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity."

English-language idioms

An idiom is a common word or phrase with a culturally understood meaning that differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest. For example, an English speaker would understand the phrase "kick the bucket" to mean "to die" – and also to actually kick a bucket. Furthermore, they would understand when each meaning is being used in context. An idiom is not to be confused with other figures of speech such as a metaphor, which invokes an image by use of implicit comparisons (e.g., "the man of steel" ); a simile, which invokes an image by use of explicit comparisons (e.g., "faster than a speeding bullet"); and hyperbole, which exaggerates an image beyond truthfulness (e.g., like "missed by a mile" ). Idioms are also not to be confused with proverbs, which are simple sayings that express a truth based on common sense or practical experience.

An idiom is a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words. In another definition, an idiom is a speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements. In idioms, usually English learners would have a hard time understanding the real meaning if they did not have an English idioms dictionary. English has thousands of idioms. Most of English idioms are informal.