From the Brain of Matty

idioms (04.03.07 8:37 am)

I've been thinking of idiomatic phrases. For whatever reason. If you don't know what I mean by idiomatic phrases, here's what Wikipedia has to say:

An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not compositional�that is, whose meaning does not follow from the meaning of the individual words of which it is composed. For example, the English phrase to kick the bucket means to die. A listener knowing the meaning of kick and bucket will not thereby be able to predict that the expression can mean to die. Idioms are often, though perhaps not universally, classified as figures of speech.

It probably goes on to list a bunch of examples, but I haven't actually looked. (I used Google's 'define' functionality to get that text^^)

Here are some examples of idiomatic phrases that I can think of off the top of my head, which other English speakers may or may not know. I'm not sure how many of these are English-language, British-Commonwealth, Australian, or North-Queensland specific.

get up someone
the apple of my eye
kick the bucket
all in all
all of a sudden

Which of the above do you recognise, and what others can you add?

For most of them (eg. kick the bucket) there was probably once a context that people recognised that allowed the phrase to stick. So I guess we could include things like "the weakest link," since it only has meaning when you know the context of "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link." Others might include:

the weakest link
ballpark figure
snowball's chance
Buckley's
all fired up
home and hosed

Name some I've missed. There are lots.

Note: there are lots of other phrases that people probably consider idiomatic because you have to know a specific (uncommon) definition of a work to understand it. I don't think those are idiomatic, they're just exclusive. Nowhere, in any definition of any word in "kick the bucket" can one derive "die."

Note also: Euphemisms (like "a bun in the oven") don't count. To understand them, all you need is imagination.

← →