Idiom

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Idiom

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:54 pm

• idiom •

Pronunciation: id-ee-êm • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A trope, figure of speech, an expression that cannot be analyzed word for word, but must be understood as a whole, as 'fly off the handle'. 2. A dialect, a way of talking, the vocabulary of a particular region, period, school of thought, as 'the jazz idiom' or 'the impressionist idiom'.

Notes: I have used this word on numerous occasions in the Good Words. We even created a game, "Idioms & Adages", but I've never written up this word. The adjective is idiomatic(al), the adverb idiomatically, and the stuff idioms are made of is idiomaticity.

In Play: Idioms are the last thing we master when learning a second language; in fact, most speakers never gain a native mastery of them: "Igor spoke perfect English, but the Russian spy was caught because he used so few idioms in his speech." The other sense of this Good Word is simply "a way of talking": "Why are combat soldiers called, in the political idiom of today, 'boots on the ground'?"

Word History: English borrowed this word, as usual, from French idiome with the same meaning. The French word is the remains of Latin idioma, taken directly from Greek idioma "peculiarity, characteristic"; Latin narrowed the meaning to refer only to language. The Greek noun was based on the adjective idios "own, peculiar", also the basis of English idiot. Greek converted its word from Proto-Indo-European swed-yo "own, personal", which emerged in Sanskrit as svami "one's own master", origin of English swami. It also turned up in almost all Slavic languages as svoj "one's own". (Let's all now thank William Hupy for suggesting today's unfortunately hitherto overlooked word—each in his or her own idiom.)
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Slava
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Re: Idiom

Postby Slava » Sat Dec 13, 2014 4:28 pm

On The Atlantic's website there is a quiz of 11 foreign idioms, from 11 languages. It looks like fun but doesn't work for me for some reason. Maybe you'll have better luck. Here it is:

http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... om/383654/
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Re: Idiom

Postby Philip Hudson » Sat Dec 13, 2014 4:39 pm

"Boots on the ground" is an idiom. It is also an attempt to mask the terrible fact that when boots are on the ground, there is usually someone in those boots and in harm's way.
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Re: Idiom

Postby Slava » Sat Dec 13, 2014 4:49 pm

I'm not sure if boots on the ground is really an idiom or more a euphemism. Idioms don't usually have real sense to them, like kick the bucket for dying. I'd go for calling botg an example of metonymy.
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Re: Idiom

Postby Philip Hudson » Sat Dec 13, 2014 6:14 pm

Slava: Thanks for the correction. I stand corrected. I prefer euphemism over the less well known word metonymy.
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Re: Idiom

Postby Perry Lassiter » Sat Dec 13, 2014 7:59 pm

Boots on the ground always struck me as a practical idiom. Merely to clear a territory, as with air strikes, leaves it open until someone literally stakes a claim by being there. Planting a flag on the poles and the moon had to do with someone being there. Their boots were on that ground.

Btw, I got 6/11 prob because I'm a good guesser on multiple choice. Had it only given the term and asked a definition, I'd have been clueless, itself an idiom?

Another btw, I've wondered why Bob is so many people's uncle for years and why having him in that position simplifies things so much? May be sour grapes, because Lloyd and Egar were my uncles.
pl

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Re: Idiom

Postby Philip Hudson » Sun Dec 14, 2014 7:02 pm

I blame all my failures on not having an Uncle Bob.
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Bob's Your Uncle

Postby Slava » Sun Dec 14, 2014 7:14 pm

As to Bob and Uncledom, here's a piece with three possibilities of the origin:

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bobs-your-uncle.html
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Re: Idiom

Postby misterdoe » Tue Dec 16, 2014 7:20 pm

Idioms can definitely be tricky when it comes to other languages. And it's easy to forget that they're not universal. I tried to tell a Spanish-speaking coworker once, "Naturaleza me llama," thinking I was saying that "nature's calling." She had no idea what I was saying; if Spanish has such an expression it's apparently not phrased that way... :oops:

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Re: Idiom

Postby Philip Hudson » Thu Dec 18, 2014 1:04 am

Your coworker may have thought you were wanting to take a wilderness trip. That is what I would have thought. I have never heard "nature's calling" in the sense I am thinking you mean. Do you mean you need to go to the little boy's room?

Nature was calling the sled dog Buck in Jack London's novel "The Call of the Wild."
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Re: Idiom

Postby call_copse » Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:04 am

Both senses can work - we have a longer version from which this is derived - 'to answer a call of nature'. A polite euphemism a la powdering the nose.

e.g. I'm on my way, just have to answer the call of nature.
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Re: Idiom

Postby Perry Lassiter » Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:07 pm

I should expect only women resort to powdering the nose. I haven't since I left the theater.
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Re: Idiom

Postby misterdoe » Wed Jun 03, 2015 1:48 pm

Ray Charles had a song, Greenbacks, where he spoke of the lady he was trying to woo, Flo, having to go powder her nose. But he says she took his money and "went down to the powder place." :shock: Later he says, when noting how long she'd been gone, "a nose powder sho' don't take that long." Took the idiom in a new direction, he did...


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