The Use of Idioms
It 's So Clichéd "She sat down to write her paper without batting an eyelash." This sentence contains an example of what is called an idiom. Idioms are individual forms of expression specific to one language. They can be thought of as a group of two or more words that together mean something different from the literal meaning of the individual words. "Without batting an eyelash" means to be passive, or show no interest in an event or situation. This phrase first appeared in the early 1900 's."Batting", used in this phrase, was intended to mean "blinking". If a person is so cool and calm that they do not even blink when confronted with something unusual, they there is no outward show of emotion. "Without batting an eyelash" is just one of about ten thousand idiomatic expressions! Idioms are said to appear in every language. Some of ours have even originated elsewhere. Our English idioms can be quite confusing to a foreigner since the meaning of them, as previously noted, may have little or nothing to do with the meanings of the words taken one by one. An example of this is the phrase "let the cat out of the bag". While today that means to reveal a secret, a hundred years ago the phrase actually meant to let a cat out of a bag. Foreigners may find that to fully understand our language, they will have to understand our idioms. The use of idioms dates as far back as biblical times, and can come from something as random as horse racing. Many authors throughout history have made up idioms to liven up their writings. These authors were popular, so the words they wrote became equally popular. Some examples of these authors are Homer, Aesop, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare. Word experts have difficulty with agreeing on the exact origins of our idioms, but it is said that some came from Native American customs and others from African-American speech. Some have become popular because they rhyme, or because they contain alliteration. There are idioms that
Cited: Ammer, Christine The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms New York: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1997 Ammer, Christine The Facts on File Dictionary of Cliches New York: Facts on File, 2001 Baugh, Albert C. and Cable, Thomas A History of the English Language Fifth Edition, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002 Rogers, James The Dictionary of Cliches New York: Ballantine Books, 1985 Terban, Marvin Scholastic Dictionary of Idioms: More Than 600 Phrases, Sayings and Expressions New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1996 Quinion, Michael "Is This a Word?" World Wide Words updated 17 November 2004 Accessed 18 November 2004 http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/isthisaword.htm