Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi,
My name is Jennifer - I am from an non-teaching background, so excuse me if I ask any dumb questions. Just wanted to pick your brains on the following issue.
I sometimes teach my Asian colleagues a bit of English. I teach them things like "a piece of cake", "raining cats and dogs" - which I believe to be idioms. When I look up the dictionary, an idiom is described as a set of words to have a diff. meaning to what is suggested by the individual words. How about phrases like "as skinny as a stick" or "bite the bullet", or "lemon"? What are these? I do not want to misinform my 'students'.
Thanks for 'reading'!
~ Jennifer

I think they are idioms.

"An adverbial phrase" is a grammatical term for a set of word functioning
adverbially in a sentence.

In comparison,
We can divide word units into four kinds.
adverbial one, adjectival one, nominal one and verbal one.

I suggest another word for them.
That is "usage"
I don't know the word usage is widely used in English speaking society.
But as a ESL student, understanding of the word "usage" should not be
ignored.

For example, you usually use the phrase "heavy smoker" instead of "big smoker".

Choosing the word "heavy" is not difficult for you because you might hear
that so many time.
However, It's not easy to choose "heavy" in front of "smoker" for EFL students.

We call it those kind of things "Usage".

"The usage and idiom" is a matter of culture.

They mean almost same each other.

While idiom is more cultural , usage is more environmental.
And An idiom has more different meaning from the original word meaning than usage.

In conclution,
I think they belong to idiom.

By the way, what do theyt mean by "bite the bullet" and "bite the lemon"?
And one more...

Don't you really use "big smoker"?

"heavy smoker" and "big smoker" is an example that I give to my students in teaching the concept of "Usage".


But I doubt that "big smoker" is really not used or used , these days.


Thank you

Joon,

Thanks for your input.

In regards to your question, as a native speaker, I have never heard "big smoker" used - rather "heavy smoker" is the common usage.

And "to bite the bullet" - well... it means to indure some sort of hardship that you expect to happen (usually for a short period of time), and get it over and done with.

When something is described to be a "lemon" - it suggests that it thing described is bad or not working. Often it can be used to describe a second-hand car. For example - "Oh no, you just bought a lemon!".

Hope that helps!

~ Jennifer

Guys,

Personally I dont think "lemon" and "skinny as a stick" is technically idioms. If this is so, what is the technical grouping word for it - if any? Anyone to shed some light on this?

~ Jennifer
(Confused!)

I think joon gave a very competent answer, and extensive at that! I can see his point about the difference between "big smoker" and "heavy smoker" - in CHinese or Korean, the qualifier ('big', 'heavy') would be "big", which implies not only, or not necessarily, size but qualifies the action ("smoking") implied in the noun ("smoker"). Thus, a "big smoker" is a "smoker that smokes a lot" - the exact same meaning as "heavy smoker".
What's the difference? - It is the use of different adjectives with metaphorical meanings. A "big" smoker does not have to be a person wearing XXXL clothes; and a "heav" smoker does not have to weigh 200 kgs. Thus, the adjectives are used figuratively.
When phrases are used figuratively, they are called 'idiomatic expressions" - provided they enter the mainstream of the language and can be looked up in reference books.
"Idiomatic" literally means "popular", or "the people's way of saying things". It often is subliterary.

I concur.

In addition, let's also remember that whether or not a particular phrase is an idiom is not a black or white matter. There is a continuum of idiomaticity at play. Some phrases may be extremely opaque in meaning considering the individual words in the phrase. For example, the phrase "by and large" (meaning=generally) could be said to be "highly idiomatic." Same could be said for "kick the bucket", or "lemon" (meaning=unacceptable quality). On the other hand, other phrases are at least partially transparent. "Heavy smoker" might be one of these, as would, perhaps, "feeling under the weather." To "give [her] the cold shoulder" might be somewhere in the middle. Trying to exactly place a given phrase on this continuum is likely to be a difficult and unuseful task, but recognition of the existence of it might be helpful.

Larry Latham

To use an idiom from my technician friends, I'm going to 'throw a spanner in the works' here! I have to say that 'big smoker' doesn't shock me, I would understand this straightaway, given that people often say 'big' before a noun phrase (He's a big Elvis Presley fan).

This reminds me of a point we should be aware of when we teach idioms to students - are the idioms that we use well known?

To give an example, when I started teaching I used to tell my students that 'uptown' means the centre of a town or city, because that's what people say in my home town. After a while, I discovered that the rest of the world uses the expression 'downtown' !

The center of your hometown is on the height of it

Wouldn't "skinny as a stick" be nothing more than a simile? A popular simile, but not an idiom because the meaning is straightforward. Also "lemon" referring to a bad product would simply be a slang definition, and by now I'm sure it's a legitimate definition in most dictionaries.

I've always heard idiomatic expressions reserved for phrases which have a meaning unrelated to the individual words' meaning. So "kicked the bucket" is an idiom because it has nothing to do with kicking or buckets, but "drinks like a fish" indeed refers to drinking so does not fall into the idiom category. The latter expression is again a simile.

Phil

Phil,

Yes that was what I was getting at initially. As I remember idioms are a collection of words that don't mean what the individual words suggest - and as you indicated the meaning of phrases such as "skinny as a stick" is quite close to what the individual words mean. Thanks - your points make things clearer for me now.

~ Jennifer

Hi!

I just joined this forum and hope to be able to make some useful contribution to discussions here.

Something nobody has yet mentioned is the metaphor, which is defined by the Shorter Oxford as a " figure of speech, in which a word or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable".

This is how I would categorise the word 'lemon' - as someone said, a car can be a lemon, and I guess what this means is that the car metaphorically produces the same reaction as a lemon i.e. it leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

Ahhhhhhhh.... that was the other word I was trying to scramble for in my head - METAPHOR. Based on the little grammar I learnt in Oz, I remember there being a distinct difference b/w a SIMILIE and a METAPHOR? Can anyone help there?
~ Jennifer

Metaphors are very common and you would not suspect some of the common expressions in our language as being some of them:
- table leg; axis of evil; skyscraper; joystick...
Compare these metaphors to the following similes:
- As hungry as a lion; as pure as gold; as white as snow.
Many similes stress a quality beyond the normal, lifting the object so described to a higher plane. In another word: They are often hyperbolic!

And that is the difference between a simile and a metaphor: the simile draws attention to itself by using adverbs such as and like, whereas the metaphor is much more subtle and does not flag its presence.

Harzer

Guys,

So let me summarize what the responses were (and pls correct me where I am wrong):

SIMILE: a figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared. A simile draws attention to itself by using adverbs such as *as* and *like*.
==> As skinny as a stick

METAPHOR: a figure of speech, in which a word or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable,
==> lemon
==> he needs [/i]room to grow

IDIOM: a collection of words that does not mean the same thing as the individual words.
==> raining cats and dogs.

My question is then:
1) can some of these be classed in more than one type, ie both an idiom and a metaphor? For example "raining cats and dogs" can that be also classed as a metaphor - it seems to fit the definition.

Thanks!

~ Jennifer