The Persistence of Idioms by Orlando Bartro
The American Heritage Dictionary defines an idiom as “an expression that is peculiar to a given language.”
I experienced an example of this when talking to a Brazilian girl in Portuguese.
“A little while ago” makes obvious sense in English, but “um pouco passato” in Portuguese means nothing—and she thought it hilarious.
Each language has developed its own little expressions that come to seem so natural and obvious that we often don’t notice we’re using them!
These idioms persist for centuries, as I noticed when reading the Middle English original of John Lydgate’s, The Siege of Thebes (1422).
Here is a sampling of idioms from Lydgate that any modern speaker will recognize:
“cause to compleyn”
“of oon accord”
“no lenger tarye” (“no longer tarry”)
“stont in jupartie” (“stands in jeopardy”)
“by and by”
“lytil wonder”
“stille as ston”
These idioms have persisted in English for at least five hundred and ninety-nine years!
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, usually available at Amazon for $4.91.