What is Idiom? Idiom Definition and Meaning

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What is Idiom

So what does idiom mean? Idiom is an expression peculiar to a particular language and culture. If the expression translated literally, the meaning is distorted or completely lost. As idioms are used quite often, some companies produce dictionaries of such persistent expressions.

This helps to understand the culture of the country better and to find out the subtleties of communicating with the country’s citizens. Every idiom has its own meaning.

Idiom Examples. Idiom in the Sentence.

As it has been already mentioned, idioms are different in all the languages. For example the Russian equivalent of English ‘a drop in the bucket’ will sound like ‘a drop in the sea’.

Or, for example, the English idiom ‘when pigs fly’ which means something that will never happen will sound in Russian completely different – ‘when a crayfish whistle on the mountain’.

One more example of idiom is ‘speak of the devil’ which is used when the person you have been talking about appears just in front of you.“Betty, speak of the devil, we were just talking about you 3 seconds ago!”