idiom

Noun

idiom (plural idioms or idiomata)

1. A manner of speaking, a mode of expression peculiar to a language, language family, or group of people.
   • In English, idiom requires the indefinite article in a phrase such as "she's an engineer", whereas in Spanish, idiom forbids it.
   • Some of the usage prescriptions improved clarity and were kept; others that yielded discordant violations of idiom were eventually revised.

   Synonyms:

   idiomaticness, idiomaticity

   1. A programming construct or phraseology that is characteristic of the language.
      • I have to use the same assignment and call to raw_input in two places. How can I avoid that? I can use the while True/break idiom: […]2005, Magnus Lie Hetland, Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional, →ISBN, page 100
2. A language or language variety; specifically, a restricted dialect used in a given historical period, context, etc.
   • In the idiom of the day, they were sutlers, although today they'd probably be called vendors.
   • Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of "like" has spread through the idiom of the young.2010 January 13, Christopher Hitchens, “The Other L-Word”, in Vanity Fair

   Synonyms:

   dialect, language, languoid, lect, vernacular

3. An established phrasal expression whose meaning may not be deducible from the literal meanings of its component words.
   • She often spoke in idioms, pining for salad days and complaining about pots calling the kettle black.
   • You’re history, we say […]. Surely it is an American idiom. Impossible to imagine a postwar European saying, “You’re history. . . . That’s history,” meaning fuhgeddaboudit, pal.2008, Patricia Hampl, “You’re History”, in Patricia Hampl, Elaine Tyler May, editors, Tell Me True: Memoir, History, and Writing a Life, Minnesota Historical Society, →ISBN, page 134
4. An artistic style (for example, in art, architecture, or music); an instance of such a style.
   • the idiom of the expressionists