What Is an Idiom

What Is an Idiom If English is your second language, idioms may well puzzle you. The words that are used have little or nothing to do with the topic under discussion, but English speakers slip them in without thinking twice (if youre interested in learning the meaning of many common idioms, you can use this random phrase generator). If you are a native English speaker and youre wondering how on earth these figures of speech came to be a part of the English language, in many instances youll have your work cut out tracking their origins. Sometimes theyre well known, and sometimes, theyre quite obscure. You may have noticed I used the phrase have your work cut out. Its a typical example of an idiom. For those looking for a definition, an idiom is a frequently used saying where the words of the saying dont relate to their literal meaning. To illustrate, what has cutting out got to do with having a difficult task to perform? The answer is simply We dont know. There are a lot of stories about how this phrase slipped into common parlance, but nobody is absolutely sure. Mad hatters, cats and dogs and more Although idioms are a bit crazy after all, the individual words dont make literal sense, they do make the language more fun and colorful. For example, you could say that its raining very hard, but that isnt nearly as colorful as saying its raining cats and dogs, even though canines and felines are not falling from the sky. The origins of this particular idiom are also foggy, but that doesnt stop us from using the phrase. English is an eccentric language, and its students might even think were all as mad as hatters. Lovers of literature may be pardoned for thinking that the idiomatic phrase mad as a hatter comes from the classic childrens story Alice in Wonderland, but theyll have to look for darker origins to get to the truth of the matter. Old-fashioned hat makers worked with mercurous nitrate, and mental disturbance was a symptom of its poisoning effects. Common Idioms: what they mean and where they come from You can purchase whole dictionaries of idioms, so covering them all with a blog post would be absolutely impossible, but weve tracked down some common ones and did our best to uncover their origins. Driving me up the wall / round the twist means that something is, at least figuratively speaking, maddening. A constant noise, someone elses irritating habit or trying to grasp a difficult concept are all things that might drive you up the wall. No-one really knows when this idiom slipped into English, but the words themselves create the image of someone desperately trying to get away. Once in a blue moon, Over the moon and Asking for the moon are among the many moon related expressions we use. A happy person who has just had something wonderful happen to them is Over the moon with this turn of events. A demanding person who wants you to do the impossible is Asking for the moon and something that happens very rarely occurs Once in a blue moon. So-called blue moons occur when there are two full moons in one month. Its a rare occurrence, hence its use as an idiom. A case of the pot calling the kettle black is a very old idiom and was first recorded by Cervantes in his classic book Don Quixote. It is used to describe someone who accuses another person of being something that they are themselves. Of course, back then, all cooking was done over the fire, so you can be sure that both pots and kettles were equally black. Beat around the bush means avoiding the main point or issue. Its one of the oldest idioms in English, and the oldest example we know of that comes from a medieval poem. Hunters would send beaters out to beat at bushes so that birds or game would emerge, and then the hunt would be on. Obviously, the beaters didnt get any game themselves, hence the saying. The 1440 example reads: Butt as it hath be sayde full long agoo, Some bete the bussh and some the byrdes take. Bad books and Black Books are idioms for being displeased with someone. On the other side of the coin, there are Good books. This idiom demonstrates how the English language has changed. The word books was used in the same way as we use the word esteem today. There wasnt actually a book about how you felt about others, so back in the Middle Ages, these sayings werent even idioms they were a literal form of speech. Passing the buck, a disapproving way of saying that someone is handing on responsibilities to others, has its origins in the Wild West. Poker players took their game seriously, and to keep it as fair as possible, each player would have an opportunity to deal the cards. To show who would be dealer next, a knife, usually with a buck horn handle, would be placed on the table. Players called this knife, the buck. Sometimes idioms come from folk wisdom. Crying over spilt milk would be a good example of this. Sometimes they come from stories and literature, and sometimes they have their origins in the obsolete uses of words. Studying them is more interesting than you might expect, so getting an idiom dictionary can be a worthwhile investment, even if you already know the meanings of many of them. (Photo courtesy of gfpeck)