An idiom is an expression (i.e., term or phrase) whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use. In linguistics, idioms are widely assumed to be figures of speech that contradict the principle of compositionality; however, some debate has recently arisen on this subject. Terminology is the study of terms and their use — of words and compound words that are used in specific contexts. ... Look up phrase in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In linguistics, meaning is the content carried by the words or signs exchanged by people when communicating through language. ... For other uses, see Definition (disambiguation). ... Many traditional academic analyses of language divided linguistic expressions into two classes: literal and figurative. ... For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... A figure of speech, sometimes termed a rhetorical figure or device, or elocution, is a word or phrase that departs from straightforward, literal language. ... In mathematics, semantics, and philosophy of language, the Principle of Compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them. ...

In the English language expression to kick the bucket, for example, a listener knowing only the meaning of kick and bucket would be unable to deduce the expression's actual meaning, which is to die. Although it can refer literally to the act of striking a specific bucket with a foot, native speakers rarely use it that way. It cannot be directly translated to other languages – for example, the same expression in Polish is to kick the calendar, with the calendar being as detached from its usual meaning as the bucket in the English phrase is. The same expression in Dutch is het loodje leggen (to lay the piece of lead), which is entirely different from the English expression, too. Other expressions include break a leg, crossing the Rubicon and fit as a fiddle. It is estimated that William Shakespeare coined over 2,000 idioms still in use today.^{[citation needed]} The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... For other uses, see Death (disambiguation), Dead (disambiguation), or Death (band). ... 150. ... For other uses, see Foot (disambiguation). ... Crossing the Rubicon is a phrase connoting the passage of a point of no return. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

Idioms hence tend to confuse those not already familiar with them; students of a new language must learn its idiomatic expressions the way they learn its other vocabulary. In fact many natural language words have idiomatic origins, but have been sufficiently assimilated so that their figurative senses have been lost. The term natural language is used to distinguish languages spoken and signed (by hand signals and facial expressions) by humans for general-purpose communication from constructs such as writing, computer-programming languages or the languages used in the study of formal logic, especially mathematical logic. ...

Idioms and culture

An idiom is generally a colloquial metaphor — a term which requires some foundational knowledge, information, or experience, to use only within a culture where parties must have common reference. And idioms are therefore not considered a part of the language, but rather a part of the culture. As cultures are typically localized, idioms are more often not useful for outside of that local context. However some idioms can be more universally used than others, and they can be easily translated, metaphorical meaning can be more easily deduced. A colloquialism is an informal expression, that is, an expression not used in formal speech or writing. ... This article is about metaphor in literature and rhetoric. ... For other uses, see Culture (disambiguation). ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... This article is about metaphor in literature and rhetoric. ...

The most common idioms can have deep roots, traceable across many languages. To have blood on one's hands is a familiar example, whose meaning is relatively obvious, although the context within English literature (see Macbeth and Pontius Pilate) may not be. Many have translations in other languages, and tend to become international. The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S... This article is about Shakespeares play. ... Pilate redirects here. ... Look up translate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

While many idioms are clearly based in conceptual metaphors such as "time as a substance", "time as a path", "love as war" or "up is more", the idioms themselves are often not particularly essential, even when the metaphors themselves are. For example, "spend time", "battle of the sexes", and "back in the day" are idiomatic and based in essential metaphors, but one can communicate perfectly well with or without them. These "deep metaphors" and their relationship to human cognition are discussed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their 1980 book Metaphors We Live By. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Mark Johnson may refer to: Mark Johnson (professor), philosophy professor Mark Johnson (footballer) (born 1978), Australian rules footballer Mark Johnson (film producer) Mark Johnson (umpire), baseball umpire Mark Johnson (hockey player) (born 1957) Mark Johnson (rugby) Mark Johnson (baseball analyst) Mark Johnson (musician) Mark Johnson (football club director), director of...

In forms like "profits are up", the metaphor is carried by "up" itself. The phrase "profits are up" is not itself an idiom. Practically anything measurable can be used in place of "profits": "crime is up", "satisfaction is up", "complaints are up" etc. Truly essential idioms generally involve prepositions, for example "out of" or "turn into".

Interestingly, many Chinese characters are likewise idiomatic constructs, as their meanings are more often not traceable to a literal (i.e. pictographic) meaning of their assembled parts, or radicals. Because all characters are composed from a relatively small base of about 214 radicals, their assembled meanings follow several different modes of interpretation - from the pictographic to the metaphorical to those whose original meaning has been lost in history. It may be a feature that helps everyday life. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Pictogram for public toilets A pictogram or pictograph is a symbol which represents an object or a concept by illustration. ... A radical (from Latin radix, meaning root) is a basic identifiable component of every Chinese character, namely, of the Chinese Hanzi, the Japanese Kanji, and the Korean Hanja. ...

Common features

• Non-compositionality: The meaning of a collocation is not a straightforward composition of the meaning of its parts. For example, the meaning of kick the bucket no longer has anything to do with kicking buckets (Kick the bucket means to die) even if it once did (the phrase "kicking the bucket" may have originally referenced suicide by hanging, wherein the despondent person would stand on a bucket with the noose around his or her neck, and then kick the bucket upon which they were standing to allow the noose to tighten). Others, like the common yet semantically strange "leave well enough alone" may be a mondegreen for "leave both well and ill alone"^[1]. See also collocational restriction.
• Non-substitutability: One cannot substitute a word in a collocation with a related word. For example, we cannot say kick the pail instead of kick the bucket although bucket and pail are synonyms.
• Non-modifiability: One cannot modify a collocation or apply syntactic transformations. For example, John kicked the green bucket or the bucket was kicked have nothing to do with dying.

It is likely that every human language has idioms, and very many of them; a typical English commercial idiom dictionary lists about 4,000. When a local dialect of a language contains many highly developed idioms it can be unintelligible to speakers of the parent language; a classic example is that of Cockney rhyming slang. But note that most examples of slang, jargon and catch phrases, while related to idioms, are not idioms in the sense discussed here. Also to be distinguished from idioms are proverbs, which take the form of statements such as, "He who hesitates is lost." Many idioms could be considered colloquialisms. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... For other uses, see Suicide (disambiguation). ... Hanging is the suspension of a person by a ligature, usually a cord wrapped around the neck, causing death. ... For the 1948 British film, see Noose (film). ... A mondegreen is the mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase as a homophone or near-homophone in such a way that it acquires a new meaning. ... Collocational restriction is a linguistic term used in morphology. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... An idiom dictionary explains idiosyncratic stock phrases and metaphors in language. ... For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ... Cockney rhyming slang is a form of English slang which originated in the East End of London. ... For other uses, see Slang (disambiguation). ... For the glossary of hacker slang, see Jargon File. ... A catch phrase is a phrase or expression that is spontaneously popularized after a critical amount of widespread repeated usage in everyday conversation (i. ... Look up proverb in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech or writing. ...

In Spanish, the word idioma (= lengua) means language, and this is often reflected in their Second language's English—using idiom to refer to language. A second language (L2) is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue (L1). ...

Parlance

Look up Parlance in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

"Idiom" can also refer to the characteristic manner of speaking in a language, also called its parlance. An utterance consistent with a language's parlance is described as idiomatic. For example, "I have hunger" is idiomatic in several European languages if translated literally (e.g. Dutch ik heb honger, German ich habe Hunger; French j'ai faim; Spanish tengo hambre; Italian ho fame), but the usual English idiom is "I am hungry". Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ...

This sense is also carried over to programming languages, where the former sense does not apply, as an expression or statement in a programming language can generally have only one meaning. For example, in Haskell, it is possible to apply a function to all members of a list using recursion, but it is more idiomatic to use the higher-order function map. A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. ... Haskell is a standardized purely functional programming language with non-strict semantics, named after the logician Haskell Curry. ... This article is about the concept of recursion. ... In mathematics and computer science, higher-order functions are functions which can take other functions as arguments, and may also return functions as results. ...

Computer science

Main article: Programming idiom

In computer science, an idiom is a low-level pattern that addresses a problem common in a particular programming language. An idiom describes how to implement particular aspects of components or the relationships between them using the features of the given language. A programming idiom is a means of expressing a recurring construct in one or more programming languages. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... In software engineering, a design pattern is a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. ...

For instance, in C source code one might see while(*a++ = *b++);, which copies characters from b to a until the null character ('0') is encountered. This is an idiom in that a C programmer on seeing it does not need to mentally parse what it might mean, although in this case the effect of the code can be deduced from the literal syntax and C's order of operations. C is a general-purpose, block structured, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ... In arithmetic and algebra, when a number or expression is both preceded and followed by a binary operation, a rule is required for which operation should be applied first. ...

See also

• Cliché
• Collocation
• Double negative
• Set phrase
• Wiktionary Idioms category
• Four-character idiom (Chinese)

To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A double negative occurs when two forms of negation are used in the same sentence. ... A set phrase is an expression (i. ... 成语 chéngyǔ Four-character idioms, or chéngyǔ (成語/成语, literally to become (part of) the language) are widely used in 文言 Classical Chinese, a literary form used in the Chinese written language from antiquity to until 1919, and are still commonly used in Vernacular writing today. ...

References

1. ^ Aldous Huxley wrote in the introduction of Brave New World, "Resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone", which is semantically more clear.

Aldous Leonard Huxley (July 26, 1894 – November 22, 1963) was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. ... For other uses, see Brave New World (disambiguation). ...

External links

Look up Idiom in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Dictionary of English Idioms & Idiomatic Expressions
• Foreign Wife-isms How one man's foreign bride comically jumbles American idioms
• Self-study Idiom Quizzes by The Internet TEAL Journal
• Figures of Speech by Rob Bradshaw Examples of how the Bible uses idioms.
• Phrase Finder[[zh:熟语

== ^{Superscript text} Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ...