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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).
These are not merely catchy sayings. Even though some sources may identify a phrase as a catchphrase, this list is for those that meet the definition given in the lead section of the catchphrase article and are notable for their widespread use within the culture. This list is distinct from the list of political catchphrases.
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
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 ...
A aggravate – Some have argued that this word should not be used in the sense of "to annoy" or "to oppress", but only to mean "to make worse". According to AHDI, the use of "aggravate" as "annoy" occurs in English as far back as the 17th century. In Latin, from which the word was borrowed, both meanings were used. Sixty-eight percent of AHD4's usage panel approves of its use in "It's the ...
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"). During the Renaissance, scholars meticulously enumerated and classified figures of speech.
Lexical meaning is not limited to a single form of a word, but rather what the word denotes as a base word. For example, the verb to walk can become walks , walked , and walking – each word has a different grammatical meaning, but the same lexical meaning ("to move one's feet at a regular pace").
The term "word" has no well-defined meaning. [6] Instead, two related terms are used in morphology: lexeme and word-form [definition needed]. Generally, a lexeme is a set of inflected word-forms that is often represented with the citation form in small capitals. [7] For instance, the lexeme eat contains the word-forms eat, eats, eaten, and ate.