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  2. English-language idioms - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_idioms

    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).

  3. Idiom dictionary - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom_dictionary

    An idiom dictionary may be a traditional book or expressed in another medium such as a database within software for machine translation.Examples of the genre include Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which explains traditional allusions and proverbs, and Fowler's Modern English Usage, which was conceived as an idiom dictionary following the completion of the Concise Oxford English ...

  4. Idiom - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiom

    An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a figurative or non-literal meaning, rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic language , an idiomatic expression's meaning is different from the literal meanings of each word inside it. [ 1 ]

  5. Meaning of life - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life

    The first English use of the expression "meaning of life" appears in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), book II chapter IX, "The Everlasting Yea". [1]Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.

  6. Speak of the devil - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_of_the_devil

    Speak of the devil" is the short form of the English-language idiom "Speak of the devil and he doth appear" (or its alternative form "speak of the devil and he shall appear"). The form "talk of the devil" is also in use in the United Kingdom. [1] It is used when an object of discussion unexpectedly becomes present during the conversation.

  7. Existential crisis - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_crisis

    [3] [1] [5] But it can also be employed in a more literal sense as a crisis of existence to express that the existence of something is threatened. In this sense, a country, a company, or a social institution faces an existential crisis if political tensions, military threats , high debt, or social changes may have as a result that the ...

  8. Existential clause - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_clause

    The principal meaning of existential clauses is to refer to the existence of something or the presence of something in a particular place or time. For example, "There is a God" asserts the existence of a God, but "There is a pen on the desk" asserts the presence or existence of a pen in a particular place.

  9. Blessing in disguise - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blessing_in_disguise

    The phrase is expressed in the words An Zhi Fei Fu. [10] In 1900, The British Medical Journal commented on a number of cases where an assault or injury inadvertently led to the curing of a medical condition, describing them as surgical blessings in disguise.