喜樂美語

核心畫面

You can think of it as a way of saying things that belongs to a particular group of people — a set phrase or a whole manner of expression whose meaning lives in the group's habit, not in the separate parts.

一群人「自己的講法」。有些說法不是照字面組裝出來的，而是這群人長年講出來的習慣——你把每個字的意思加起來，還是猜不到…更多收起一群人「自己的講法」。有些說法不是照字面組裝出來的，而是這群人長年講出來的習慣——你把每個字的意思加起來，還是猜不到它真正在說什麼，因為意思不在字裡，在這群人共同的默契裡。under the weather 字面是「在天氣底下」，但講英文的人一聽就知道是「身體不太舒服」。這個「屬於某群人、要進到那個圈子才懂」的畫面，往小處看就是一個個固定片語，往大處看就是一整套腔調、筆法、風格。所以同一個字既能指一句拆不開的慣用語，也能指一位畫家、一個時代「講話的方式」。

Two branches

拆不開的固定說法

核心畫面縮到最小的單位：一句話短到只有幾個字，但意思仍然只屬於這群人。

idiom, fixed expression · noun · B2

A group of words that go together and have a special meaning — a meaning you cannot work out from the ordinary meaning of each separate word. For example, 'under the weather' is an idiom meaning 'ill'.

慣用語

某群人的表現腔調

同一個畫面放大到一整套表達方式：不只是某一句話屬於這群人，而是整個說法、寫法、彈法都帶著他們的印記。

style (art, writing) · noun · C1

A way of writing, speaking, playing music, or making art that is typical of a particular group of people, a place, or a time.

風格；表現手法

原始詞典資料5 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

idiomnoun/ˈɪdiəm/

  • 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.
  • 2

    computingengineeringmathematicsA manner of speaking, a mode of expression peculiar to a language, language family, or group of people.

    • 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: […]
  • 3

    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.
  • 4

    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.
  • 5

    An artistic style (for example, in art, architecture, or music); an instance of such a style.

    • the idiom of the expressionists

資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。