Thread: usage of idioms

why do you use idioms in everyday life?

They add character I guess, they aren't needed but they are used in comical ways within the cultures surrounding them. I expect there's been a lot recently deriving from the internet.


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'All Your Base Are Belong To Us'.

What are idioms

OK Olga, we spent an hour and a half chatting about this, but for the edification of others and an on-line answer, here is MY answer.

They add character (color, spice) to speech and writing, they give an idea of the speaker's emotion(s) beyond basic facts.

Q:"How was work today?" A: It was horrible, I was late, the computers crashed, my secretary was out sick, my boss yelled at me, I lost a big account and the coffee machine was broken." WAY too much information. "It was a good day to go fishing" says alot and adds a bit of levity to the situation. Conversely, a bad day fishing can be described as "It was a good day to go golfing/ to work".

Originally Posted by Leof

What are idioms

"A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements, as in keep tabs on."

So essentially, it's a statement that does not hold an applicable literal meaning, but is understood to mean something.

Here's a site that has a bunch of them with explanations (Catch-22 is one that all students of English should know! ) :
http://www.idiomsite.com/

I don't agree that it has to mean nothing, only that it doesn't mean what it directly says, if it does make sense, that is (like "it was a good day to go fishing").

Originally Posted by Seventh-Monkey

I don't agree that it has to mean nothing, only that it doesn't mean what it directly says, if it does make sense, that is (like "it was a good day to go fishing").

Fair enough. I stand corrected. My original post has been edited to this effect.

Ah I got it! Thank you!

Originally Posted by olgaa

why do you use idioms in everyday life?

Meh! Why do Russian use idioms in everyday speech? Didn't you think about it first? The answer will get you!