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Understanding Idioms: Types and Characteristics

Idioms are multi-word expressions with meanings that cannot be derived from the literal definitions of the individual words. They are fixed linguistic patterns that allow little variation in form and often have meanings unrelated to their components. Idioms are characterized by their inability to undergo changes like reordering words, deleting or adding words, replacing words, or changing grammatical structure. They vary in flexibility, transparency of meaning, and whether they are specific to a particular language or culture. There is no consensus on exactly which phrases constitute idioms, but they include verbal idioms, prepositional phrases, adjective phrases, word pairs, similes, and conversational phrases.

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2K views2 pages

Understanding Idioms: Types and Characteristics

Idioms are multi-word expressions with meanings that cannot be derived from the literal definitions of the individual words. They are fixed linguistic patterns that allow little variation in form and often have meanings unrelated to their components. Idioms are characterized by their inability to undergo changes like reordering words, deleting or adding words, replacing words, or changing grammatical structure. They vary in flexibility, transparency of meaning, and whether they are specific to a particular language or culture. There is no consensus on exactly which phrases constitute idioms, but they include verbal idioms, prepositional phrases, adjective phrases, word pairs, similes, and conversational phrases.

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IDIOMS

 What are idioms?


 ‘A construction whose meaning cannot be derived from the meanings of its constituents’
(Glucksberg, 2001).
 ‘Frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and often carry
meanings which cannot be deduced from their individual components’ (Baker, 1992).
 Croatian: frazem

 Characteristics of idioms
 You usually cannot do any of the following things to an idiom:
 Change the word order (e.g. downs and ups)
 Delete a word from it (e.g. spill beans)
 Add a word to it (e.g. face the classical music)
 Replace a word with another (e.g. bury a hatchet)
 Change its grammatical structure (e.g. the music was faced)

 Idioms are often culture- and language-specific (e.g. take coals to New Castle)
 They can take different forms and structures – some are even grammatically incorrect e.g.
do the dirty on someone.
 A certain phrase has to be institutionalized in order to become an idiom (i.e. it has to be
recognized and accepted as an idiom in a particular speech community).

 Flexibility
 This characteristic refers to the degree to which idioms can tolerate morphological and
syntactic changes.
 Some idioms do not allow any changes (e.g. idiomatic pairs) – they are called ‘frozen idioms’
 Others allow some changes e.g. ‘He has kicked the bucket’ is OK but ‘The bucket was kicked
by him’ is not.

 Transparency
 This characteristic refers to the transparency of the metaphorical meaning of an idiom (i.e.
whether we can understand what it means without a dictionary).
 Transparent metaphor makes an idiom easy to understand e.g. to talk behind one’s back
(they are called transparent idioms)
 Idioms whose meaning cannot be deduced literally are called opaque idioms (e.g. to take
coals to New Castle)

 Which phrases are considered idioms?


 Experts have different answers to this question.
 Moon (1998) believes that idioms belong to a broad category called ‘fixed expressions’.
 According to the author, fixed expressions encompass idioms, collocations, proverbs, similes
and sayings.
 According to Fernando (1996), all conventionalized phrases can be called idioms (including
the above mentioned).

 Types of idioms:
 Single word (cool, brainy)
 Verbal idioms (V + O) e.g. have second thoughts
 Prepositional phrases e.g. in cold blood
 Adjective phrases e.g. wet behind the ears
 Word pairs e.g. safe and sound
 Similes (as + adjective + as + N) e.g. as blind as a bat
 Conversational phrases (e.g. Long time, no see)

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