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An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
Categorized as formulaic language, an idiomatic expression's meaning is different from the literal meanings of each word inside it. [1] Idioms occur frequently in all languages; in English alone there are an estimated twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions. [2] Some well known idioms in English are spill the beans (meaning "reveal secret ...
Phrases can consist of a single word or a complete sentence. In theoretical linguistics, phrases are often analyzed as units of syntactic structure such as a constituent. There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its technical use in linguistics.
Please keep this category purged of everything that is not an article about a word or phrase. For a list of words relating to English phrases, see the English phrases category of words in Wiktionary , the free dictionary.
A proverbial phrase or expression is a type of conventional saying similar to a proverb and transmitted by oral tradition. The difference is that a proverb is a fixed expression, while a proverbial phrase permits alterations to fit the grammar of the context. [1] [2] In 1768, John Ray defined a proverbial phrase as:
Old English is essentially a distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms , and word order was much freer than in Modern English.
This is a list of catchphrases found in American and British english language television and film, where a catchphrase is a short phrase or expression that has gained usage beyond its initial scope. These are not merely catchy sayings.
This is a list of idioms that were recognizable to literate people in the late-19th century, and have become unfamiliar since. As the article list of idioms in the English language notes, a list of idioms can be useful, since the meaning of an idiom cannot be deduced by knowing the meaning of its constituent words. See that article for a fuller ...