Word of the Day:
idiom
What It Means
A manner of speaking, a mode of expression peculiar to a language, language family, or group of people.
A programming construct or phraseology that is characteristic of the language.
Some of the usage prescriptions improved clarity and were kept; others that yielded discordant violations of idiom were eventually revised.
Idiom in Context
“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.”
Did You Know?
From Middle French idiome, and its source, Late Latin idioma, from Ancient Greek ἰδίωμα (idíōma, “a peculiarity, property, a peculiar phraseology, idiom”), from ἰδιοῦσθαι (idioûsthai, “to make one's own, appropriate to oneself”), from ἴδιος (ídios, “one's own, pertaining to oneself, private, personal, peculiar, separate”). By surface analysis, idi- + -om.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: idiom (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “idiom.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/idiom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
