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An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind (Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), leader of the Indian independence movement) An Englishman's home is his castle/A man's home is his castle; Another day, another dollar; Another happy landing; An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; Any port in a storm
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).
Deuteronomy 32:10: "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye". Psalm 17:8: "Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings". Proverbs 7:2: "Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye".
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]
Sands of time (idiom) The Satyr and the Traveller; School of Hard Knocks; Sea change (idiom) Shut up; Silver bullet; Silver lining (idiom) Silver spoon; Sin City (description) Sitting on the fence; Skeleton in the closet; Skin of my teeth; Sliced bread; Small matter of programming; Smoke and mirrors; Speak of the devil; Spitting distance; List ...
Its most common use is in response to an affirmative statement, for example "I saw Mrs. Smith exercising, I swear!" 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 ...
This phrase is sometimes mistakenly rendered as "to the manor born", and used to mean 'of the privileged class”; see references for more on this one. In recent years this misconception has spread through the popularity of the British sitcom To the Manor Born , the title of which was a deliberate pun on Shakespeare's phrase.)
For example, the phrase, "John, my best friend" uses the scheme known as apposition. Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men").