idiom

id·i·om

noun \ˈi-dē-əm\

Definition of IDIOM

1

a : the language peculiar to a people or to a district, community, or class : dialect

b : the syntactical, grammatical, or structural form peculiar to a language

2

: 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”)

3

: a style or form of artistic expression that is characteristic of an individual, a period or movement, or a medium or instrument <the modern jazz idiom>; broadly : manner, style <a new culinary idiom>

Examples of IDIOM

1. The expression “give way,” meaning “retreat,” is an idiom.
2. rock and roll and other musical idioms
3. a feature of modern jazz idiom
4. She is a populist in politics, as she repeatedly makes clear for no very clear reason. Yet the idiom of the populace is not popular with her. —P.J. O'Rourke, New York Times Book Review, 9 Oct. 2005
5. And the prospect of recovering a nearly lost language, the idiom and scrappy slang of the postwar period … —Don DeLillo, New York Times Magazine, 7 Sept. 1997
6. We need to explicate the ways in which specific themes, fears, forms of consciousness, and class relationships are embedded in the use of Africanist idiom … —Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark, 1992

Origin of IDIOM

Middle French & Late Latin; Middle French idiome, from Late Latin idioma individual peculiarity of language, from Greek idiōmat-, idiōma, from idiousthai to appropriate, from idios

First Known Use: 1588

Related to IDIOM

Synonyms

expression, phrase

Related Words

cliché (also cliche); locution, term; epithet, expletive, name; byword, cry, motto, shibboleth, slogan, watchword; archaism, colloquialism, euphemism, modernism, neologism, provincialism, vulgarism

Other Grammar and Linguistics Terms

ablaut, allusion, anacoluthon, diacritic, gerund, infinitive, metaphor, semiotics, simile