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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 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
However, even examples like "Cow-it" and "I-I-I" remain controversial. There is ambiguity in defining and identifying idioms in American Sign Language as little is known of ASL's use of idioms. Cokely & Baker-Shenk write, "ASL seems to have very few widely-used idioms, according to the standard definition of 'idiom.'" [5]
Wh-questions can be formed in a variety of ways in ASL. The wh-word can appear solely at the end of the sentence, solely at the beginning of the sentence, at both the beginning and end of the sentence (see section 4.4.2.1 on 'double-occurring wh-words', or in situ (i.e. where the wh-word is in the sentence structure before movement occurs)). [58]
For example, in Portuguese, the expression saber de coração 'to know by heart', with the same meaning as in English, was shortened to 'saber de cor', and, later, to the verb decorar, meaning memorize. In 2015, TED collected 40 examples of bizarre idioms that cannot be translated literally. They include the Swedish saying "to slide in on a ...
A phraseme, also called a set phrase, fixed expression, idiomatic phrase, multiword expression (in computational linguistics), or idiom, [1] [2] [3] [citation needed] is a multi-word or multi-morphemic utterance whose components include at least one that is selectionally constrained [clarification needed] or restricted by linguistic convention such that it is not freely chosen. [4]
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 ...
A famous example for lexical ambiguity is the following sentence: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.", meaning "When flies fly behind flies, then flies fly in pursuit of flies." [39] [circular reference] It takes advantage of some German nouns and corresponding verbs being homonymous. While not noticeable ...