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The Makeup of Idioms
If you had never heard someone say "We're on the same page," would you have understood that they weren't talking about a book? And the first time someone said he'd "ride shotgun", did you wonder where the gun was? A modern English-speaker knows thousands of idioms, and uses many every day. Idioms can be completely ordinary ("first off", "the other day", "make a point of", "What's up?") or more colorful ("asleep at the wheel", "bite the bullet", "knuckle sandwich"). A particular type of idiom, called a phrasal verb, consists of a verb followed by an adverb or preposition (or sometimes both); in make over, make out, and make up, for instance, notice how the meanings have nothing to do with the usual meanings of over, out, and up.
Examples of idiom in a Sentence
P. J. O'Rourke, New York Times Book Review, 9 Oct. 2005
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
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
The expression “give way,” meaning “retreat,” is an idiom.
rock and roll and other musical idioms
a feature of modern jazz idiom
Jem Aswad, Variety, 19 Nov. 2024
The New York alto saxophonist, composer, vocalist and bandleader makes her Bay Area debut this weekend with a series of gigs, introducing a beguiling body of tunes shaped by her Chinese American heritage and deep engagement with various jazz, folk and pop idioms.
—Andrew Gilbert, The Mercury News, 6 Nov. 2024
Williams was writing in an idiom that was unique to him.
—Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 4 Nov. 2024
Among their main fixations is modern Turkish, a language made up of flashy imports—French and English cognates, a new alphabet—and antique idioms.
—Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 8 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for idiom 
Dictionary Entries Near idiom
Cite this Entry
“Idiom.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiom. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
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idiom
noun
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