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Adage: Short, memorable words of wisdom that are well-known. Proverb: Short, memorable words of wisdom that are well-known and often come from folklore; Maxim: Short, memorable words of wisdom often related to morality or the sciences; Idiom: Short, memorable words whose true meaning does not come from their literal interpretation
Firstly, it must be recognised that the term 'idiom' is highly polysemic and has been given different conflicting senses by various linguists. In fact, Strassler's 1982 Idioms in English. A Pragmatic Analysis. spends pages covering this, and includes the worrying
From [Merriam-]Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms (1942), which inckludes aphorism and maxim (along with saw, adage, proverb, motto, epigram, and apothegm) under the general topic word saying: Saying, saw, maxim, adage, proverb, motto, epigram, aphorism, apothegm agree in denoting a sententious expression of a general truth. ...
It comes from catching flies. I think your main problem with this is, why would you catch flies? The reason could possibly be put down to catching flies to get rid of them. However, the underlying meaning of this idiom is that , you would experience more success if you were to be nice, rather than be un-nice.
As an example, “raining cats and dogs” is both an idiom and a phrase. “A herd of cats” is a phrase but not an idiom. Expression has about the same meaning as phrase, except it is usually used of a phrase which is in common use. So an idiom is a certain sort of expression, which in turn is a subset of phrase: idiom > expression > phrase.
Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, second edition (2013) doesn't consider "birds of a feather" an idiom—and consequently doesn't include an entry for it. However, Christine Ammer (same person), The Facts on File Dictionary of Clichés , second edition (2006) does consider it a cliché.
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The correct form of the idiom is: first things first. Things is plural here. You could imagine having a put before the idiom: put first things first; let's put first things first; you should put first things first; This clarifies the plurality of things. So, her thinking is actually fact!
25. Piece of cake -- “A piece of cake literally refers to a slice of cake. Idiomatically, the phrase refers to a job, task or other activity that is considered pleasant – or, by extension, easy or simple.”. See examples in Google books. Doddle -- “A job, task or other activity that is simple or easy to complete.”.
Even "talk the walk" makes sense if you read it as meaning something comparable to the U.S. idiom "talk a good game"—that is, sound good but not necessarily do well. Many of the matches for "talk the walk" use that phrase in tandem with "walk the talk" to emphasize the value of communicating about what needs to be done before you shift to ...