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to which the response given would be something like, "Yeah right, and cows fly". Other variations slightly fallen into disuse include cuando las ranas crien pelo ("when frogs grow hair") and cuando San Juan agache el dedo ("when Saint John bends his finger"). The latter is a reference to the common depiction of St. John with one or two extended ...
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).
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Glossary of English-language idioms derived from baseball; Bed of roses; Belling the Cat; Best friends forever; Between Scylla and Charybdis; Bill matter; Birds of a feather flock together; Black sheep; Blessing in disguise; Blood, toil, tears and sweat; Born in the purple; The Boy Who Cried Wolf; Bread and butter (superstition) Break a leg ...
(v.) senses orig. US and now common are: to be a candidate in an election (UK also stand); to manage or provide for (a business, a family, etc.); the idioms run scared, run into. More s.v. home run ; see wiktionary for additional meanings, a type of cage which is made so that animals (e.g. hamsters, rabbits, guinea pigs, etc.) can run around in it.
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 ...
In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language, often regarded as impolite, but persisted, sometimes in an altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland, [4] as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. The use of the pronoun is also still present in Christian prayer and in ...
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: