Talk:Idiom

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Which one is idiom

The idiom “To make clean breast of ” is used to A. gain prominence B. praise oneself C. Confess without any reserve. D. destroy before it blooms

Choose the correct answer. Jayanth2642000 (talk) 01:31, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Articles

Can someone please meantion the relation between idiomaticity and the use of articles? --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

The editor seems to mean definite and indefinite articles like "the" and "a". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.57.15 (talk) 11:55, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• English-English dictionaries and thesaurus books.JPG

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:54, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

POV issue with catenas

The section on dealing with non-compositionality writes about the "catena". This section was written by User:Tjo3ya. This user is the researcher who has proposed the "catena" concept. This lead to an issue of possible WP:COI / WP:ADVOCACY on the Catena (linguistics) page. The same issue appears here, and probably in many other places. Kaĉjo (talk) 08:41, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

व्हाट इज Contracted forms

यह मेरा प्रश्न है मुझे समझ नहीं आ रहा है 2409:4053:799:7774:0:0:72E:38B0 (talk) 10:23, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Ask at hi.wikipedia.org for Hindi. In English a contraction is a combination of two words while omitting some letters.PrisonerB (talk) 10:28, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Rescuing "Parlance" section

The following section was deleted on 2 December 2008 due to vandalism. Maybe it should be inserted again?

== Parlance ==<!-- This section is linked from [[Nickname]] -->

{{wiktionarypar|Parlance}}

"Idiom" can also refer to the characteristic manner of speaking in a language, also called its parlance. An utterance consistent with a language's parlance is described as '''idiomatic'''. For example, "I have hunger" is idiomatic in several European languages if translated literally (e.g. Dutch ''ik heb honger'', German ''ich habe Hunger''; French ''j'ai faim''; Spanish ''tengo hambre''; Italian ''ho fame'', Portuguese ''tenho fome''), but the usual English idiom is "I am hungry".

This sense is also carried over to [[programming language]]s, where the former sense does not apply, as an expression or statement in  contenging a programming language can generally have only one meaning. For example, in [[Haskell (programming language)|Haskell]], it is possible to apply a function to all members of a list using [[recursion]], but it is more idiomatic to use the [[higher-order function]] <tt>map</tt>.

— Anton Maienfeldt (talk) 10:35, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Distinctions - things not idiomatic

Could we have a section that enumerates things that could be confused with idioms, but really are not?

• proverbs (they're a whole sentence)
• jargon, slang (does an idiom need to be more than one word?)
• metaphors and similes
• There's a link to "figures of speech" somewhere, but that term is so vague that I don't know that it's very helpful.

Lehasa (talk) 01:06, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

"The beans were spilled on our project"

I do not think that most English speakers would immediately recognise that as an idiom... a better sentence or phrase to illustrate the point might be in order, but I'm not sure what that would be or whether it is even actually necessary. AriTheHorse^{talk to me!} 03:54, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

"spill the beans" could as well mean the same as "kick the bucket"

"Semantically composite idioms have a syntactic similarity between their surface and semantic forms." doesn't make much, if any, sense (see "Compositionality" below), especially when the project might have kicked the bucket or spilled its beans (i. e. blah blah, blah). There's nothing to prevent one from putting beans into buckets. Putting beans into buckets, is that an idiom? At least it feels like one, or maybe I just created it. So much to mobility ...

So yeah, I'm not a native speaker but I guess both examples aren't too great here. 185.140.253.154 (talk) 19:04, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Compositionality

"In linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting the principle of compositionality."

This section is rather unclear because obviously, dealing with an idiom involves different rules to compose a meaning from the idiomatic statement (than a reader of the statement would apply), which even may dictate to take the idiom as a lexial item (like it being a figure of speach). I might go as far as to argue that this section basically contradicts the first sentence it starts with; and a better explanation is in order. (I won't dare any attempt to give one since the "principle of compositionality" appears to me like just an idea and as a method amongst many other methods which may be resonably applied or not, depending on the particular case. It is not guaranteed and not evident that applying the principle of compositionality to a statement will always necessarily arrive at what could be considered "truth", though it might arrive right there --- or not. And keep in mind that truth may lie in the eye of the beholder, and not anywhere else.)

Simply put, idioms and figures of speach do not contradict the principle of compositionality because the principle does not dictate what the rules are; it only requires rules.

185.140.253.154 (talk) 18:20, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Mobility

"The types of movement allowed for certain idioms [...]"

Which types are those, and which ones aren't allowed? Like is moving 'kicking the bucket' and 'spilling the beans' to 'putting beans into buckets' (see above) allowed or not? After all, it's a semantically meta-compositional(!) idiom you can easily understand compositionally when you know how it has been brought about and more semantically when you don't know (though you may end up with contradictory meanings): This article has put (spilled?) its beans into buckets, and I better stop reading it now ... 185.140.253.154 (talk) 19:37, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Dealing with non-compositionality

To make this section more understandable, someone please explain what the relation between catenae and idioms is. For example:

"Rapidly shoving the heavy closet over the carpet is pulling its leg."

Apparently that somehow would constitute an idiom since the words are there. 185.140.253.154 (talk) 20:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)