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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).
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 ]
Example: "People, pets, batteries, ... all are dead." Antimetabole: a sentence consisting of the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in reverse order. Antithesis: juxtaposition of opposing or contrasting ideas in separate clauses. Aphorismus: statement that calls into question if a word or phrase is properly used to characterize a ...
Based on common linguistic definitions, an idiom is a combination of words that contains a meaning that cannot be understood based on the literal definition of the individual words. [1] An example of an idiom is hit the sack, which means to go to bed. It can be used in a sentence like the following: I'm beat; I'm gonna hit the sack. [2]
An idiom is an expression that has a figurative meaning often related, but different from the literal meaning of the phrase. Example: You should keep your eye out for him. A pun is an expression intended for a humorous or rhetorical effect by exploiting different meanings of words. Example: I wondered why the ball was getting bigger. Then it ...
An idiom (the quality of it being known as idiomaticness or idiomaticity) is a syntactical, grammatical, or phonological structure peculiar to a language that is actually realized, as opposed to possible but unrealized structures that could have developed to serve the same semantic functions but did not.
The easiest stylistic device to identify is a simile, signaled by the use of the words "like" or "as".A simile is a comparison used to attract the reader's attention and describe something in descriptive terms.
This idiomatic expression may have been in general use much earlier than 1959. For example, the phrase appears 44 years earlier in the pages of the British Journal of Education in 1915. The sentence was presented as a trivial illustration of a question British schoolboys would be able to answer, e.g., "Is there an elephant in the class-room?" [9]