Noun: idiom
| Singular | idiom |
| Plural | idioms; idiomata |
Sample Sentences
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In English, idiom requires the indefinite article in a phrase such as "she's an engineer", whereas in Spanish, idiom forbids it.
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Some of the usage prescriptions improved clarity and were kept; others that yielded discordant violations of idiom were eventually revised.
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I have to use the same assignment and call to raw_input in two places. How can I avoid that? I can use the while True/break idiom: […] [2005, Magnus Lie Hetland, Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional, →ISBN, page 100:]
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In the idiom of the day, they were sutlers, although today they'd probably be called vendors.
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Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of "like" has spread through the idiom of the young. [2010 January 13, Christopher Hitchens, “The Other L-Word”, in Vanity Fair:]
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She often spoke in idioms, pining for salad days and complaining about pots calling the kettle black.
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You’re history, we say […]. Surely it is an American idiom. Impossible to imagine a postwar European saying, “You’re history. . . . That’s history,” meaning fuhgeddaboudit, pal. [2008, Patricia Hampl, “You’re History”, in Patricia Hampl, Elaine Tyler May, editors, Tell Me True: Memoir, History, and Writing a Life, Minnesota Historical Society, →ISBN, page 134:]
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the idiom of the expressionists
Etymology
From Middle French idiome, and its source, Late Latin idioma, from Ancient Greek ἰδίωμα (idíōma, “a peculiarity, property, a peculiar phraseology, idiom”), from ἰδιοῦσθαι (idioûsthai, “to make one's own, appropriate to oneself”), from ἴδιος (ídios, “one's own, pertaining to oneself, private, personal, peculiar, separate”). By surface analysis, idi- + -om. See: Ancient Greek Nouns '
ἰδίωμα'.
Verbs referencing "idiom"
Polish Nouns
idiom, Finnish Nouns
idiomi.