Idioms

A. Some Definitions of Idioms

‘A peculiarity of phraseology approved by the usage of the language and often having a signification other than its grammatical or logical one.’

- Oxford English Dictionary

‘A group of words with a meaning of its own that is different from the meanings of each separate word put together’

- Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

‘an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically (as no, it wasn't me) or in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (as Monday week for "the Monday a week after next Monday")

- WWWebster Dictionary

B. Characteristics of idioms

1. The meaning of an idiom is metaphorical rather than literal.

• It is not a result of the compositional function of their parts.

2. The grammatical form of an idiom is invariable and fixed.

• The process of substitution is not allowed and passive constructions cannot be formed.

The expression ‘have other fish to fry’ means that ‘to have something to do that is more important or profitable’ However, we could not say ‘have other salmon to fry’ or ‘the other fish is to be fried’.

But idioms vary a great deal on how metaphorical and invariable they are. In other words, idiomaticity (the quality of being idiomatic) is a matter of degree or scale.

C. Criteria for identifying idioms

Makkai (1972) has proposed five criteria in identifying idioms. They are:

1. the presence of at least two free morphemes in a given expression
2. the ability of these morphemes to function with different meanings in more than one environment
3. the potential ambiguity of all idioms of decoding arising from the possibility of literal interpretation
4. the semantic unpredictability of idioms arising from the fact that an idiom has a meaning which cannot be deduced from its component parts
5. institutionalisation