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Since the Shijing poems consist of four-character lines, some chengyu are direct quotes from the Classic of Poetry. For example, 萬夀無疆 'ten-thousand year lifespan without bound', a traditional expression to wish someone a long life that often appears on bowls and tableware, quotes the poem "Tian Bao" (天保, poem #166) in the Lesser ...
The examples given are the idioms "by and large", "kingdom come", and "trip the light fantastic". [13] The phrase, and other examples, are considered "opaque because it is impossible to construct a meaningful literal-scene from the formal structure.
Damning with faint praise is an English idiom, expressing oxymoronically that half-hearted or insincere praise may act as oblique criticism or condemnation. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In simpler terms, praise is given, but only given as high as mediocrity, which may be interpreted as passive-aggressive .
For example, the Arabic phrase في نفس المركب (fi nafs al-markeb) is translated as "in the same boat", and it carries the same figurative meaning as the equivalent idiom in English. Another example would be the Japanese yojijukugo 一石二鳥 (isseki ni chō), which is translated as "one stone, two birds". This is, of course ...
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).
Japanese woodblock print showcasing transience, precarious beauty, and the passage of time, thus "mirroring" mono no aware [1] Mono no aware (物の哀れ), [a] lit. ' the pathos of things ', and also translated as ' an empathy toward things ', or ' a sensitivity to ephemera ', is a Japanese idiom for the awareness of impermanence (無常, mujō), or transience of things, and both a transient ...
The origin of the squeaky wheel metaphor is unknown, but its current form is attributed to American humorist Josh Billings (the pen name of Henry Wheeler Shaw), who is said to have popularized it in his putative poem "The Kicker" (c. 1870) I hate to be a kicker, I always long for peace, But the wheel that squeaks the loudest,
From an 1867 poem by George Eliot. Referenced in the Monty Python Dead Parrot Sketch, also see Choir Invisible. Join the great majority [2] To die Euphemistic: First used by Edward Young, but the phrase 'the majority' is extremely old. Justifiable homicide: Homicide Formal