Idiom facts for kids
An idiom is a special phrase or expression where the meaning isn't obvious from the individual words. It's like a secret code! For example, if someone says "it's raining cats and dogs," they don't mean animals are falling from the sky. They mean it's raining very heavily.
Idioms are a big part of every language. In English, there are millions of them! They make language more colorful and interesting, but they can also be tricky to learn, especially if you're learning a new language.
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How Idioms Start
Many idioms started out meaning exactly what they said. Over time, their original meaning changed, or people forgot the original story behind them. This often leads to fun but sometimes incorrect ideas about where they came from.
For example, the idiom "spill the beans" means to tell a secret. Some people think it came from an old way of voting where beans were put into jars. If the jars were spilled, the votes would be revealed too early!
Other idioms are made up to be figurative from the start. "Break a leg" is a good example. This phrase means "good luck," especially before a performance. It's used because actors used to think saying "good luck" would actually bring bad luck. So, they said the opposite! Another idea is that "break a leg" refers to the curtain rope (called a "legge"). If the curtain opened many times for applause, the rope might "break" from overuse, meaning a very successful show.
Understanding Idioms
In language studies, idioms are often seen as phrases that don't follow the usual rules of meaning. Normally, you can understand a sentence by understanding each word in it. But with idioms, it's different.
Think about the phrase: Fred kicked the bucket.
If you take each word literally, it means Fred physically kicked a bucket. But the much more common, idiomatic meaning is that Fred died. You can't get the meaning "died" just by looking at the words "kicked" and "bucket." This means the idiom "kick the bucket" is stored in our minds as one whole meaning, separate from its literal words.
Idioms are like fixed word groups. The words stick together and create a new meaning. This is why idioms are usually hard to translate directly into other languages. If you translate "kick the bucket" word-for-word into another language, it probably won't make sense or will have a different meaning.
Sometimes, words are always used together in a certain order, like "high and dry." You wouldn't say "dry and high." These are called "irreversible binomials." Not all of them are idioms, though. "Chips and dip" is also irreversible, but its meaning is simple and clear.
How Idioms Can Change
Some idioms are very flexible and can be changed around in a sentence, while others are very strict and can't be changed.
- Flexible Idiom: I spilled the beans on our project.
* This can become: The beans were spilled on our project. (This still makes sense and means the secret was revealed.)
- Strict Idiom: The old man kicked the bucket.
* This cannot easily become: *The bucket was kicked (by the old man). (This sounds confusing and doesn't mean the old man died.)
Flexible idioms often have a clear connection between their literal meaning and their idiomatic meaning. For example, "oil the wheels" and "grease the wheels" both mean to make something work more smoothly. You can use "oil" or "grease" because they have similar literal meanings. But you can't say "kick the pot" instead of "kick the bucket" because "pot" doesn't have the same connection to the idiom's meaning.
Some idioms are actually like metaphors. Phrases like "jump on the bandwagon" or "pull strings" are examples. In "jump on the bandwagon," "jump on" means joining something, and a "bandwagon" can mean a popular cause. The parts of the idiom still make sense on their own, even when combined.
Idioms Around the World
Because idioms are so specific, a word-for-word translation often doesn't work. The English idiom "kick the bucket" has different equivalents in other languages:
- In Polish: kopnąć w kalendarz ("kick the calendar")
- In French: casser sa pipe ("to break his pipe")
- In Italian: tirare le cuoia ("pulling the leathers")
Some idioms are "transparent," meaning you can guess their meaning even if you translate them literally. For example, "lay one's cards on the table" means to reveal your plans or secrets. You can imagine someone literally putting their cards down. "Spill the beans" and "leave no stone unturned" (meaning to do everything possible) are also somewhat transparent.
Idioms can be confusing for people learning a new language. It's like learning new vocabulary! Many words we use every day actually started as idioms but have become so common that we don't think of them as figurative anymore.
Interestingly, some idioms are shared across many languages! For example, the Arabic phrase fi nafs al-markeb translates to "in the same boat," and it means the same thing as the English idiom.
A German linguist named Elizabeth Piirainen found that the idiom "to get on one's nerves" has the same meaning in 57 European languages! She also noted that "to shed crocodile tears" (meaning to show fake sadness) is used in many European languages, as well as Arabic, Swahili, Persian, Chinese, and others.
No one is completely sure why some idioms are shared. One idea is that people learn them from other languages and translate them directly. Another idea is that humans naturally come up with similar metaphors.
Images for kids
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This image shows how the words of an idiom (in orange) are connected in a sentence.
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This image shows how the words of a proverb (in orange) are connected.
See also
In Spanish: Idiotismo (lenguaje) para niños
- Catena (linguistics)
- Chengyu
- Cliché
- Collocation
- Comprehension of idioms
- English-language idioms
- Figure of speech
- Metaphor
- Multiword expression
- Phrasal verb
- Principle of compositionality
- Rhetorical device
