English Idioms and Common Expressions

An idiom is usually defined as a succession of words, whose meaning as a whole is not obvious from the individual meanings of the constituent parts, e.g. "to be hard up for something". Because of this characteristic, an idiom is often confusing for foreign students. They have mainly concentrated on the study of grammar and individual words, neither of which can necessarily help them to understand an idiom. For the same reason, they themselves are often unable to use idioms, although their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary may enable them to produce "normal" sentences fairly satisfactorily.

This is the more unfortunate as idioms are not some special or specialized part of the language. On the contrary, they form an integral part of the living language as spoken by native speakers of all kinds and in all kinds of situations. Just like individual words some idioms are highly formal, some highly informal, some are vulgar, some poetical, but many of them just belong to normal everyday living English and should be learnt by foreign students if they want to sound natural and to communicate effectively.

Apart from idioms in the strict sense of the word, there are also many common expressions—preferred sequences of words, one might call them—which native speakers frequently use, but which foreign learners often fail to use correctly or fail to use at all, e.g. "Pleased to meet you." "Will you answer the phone, please?" The distinction between idioms and common expressions is neglected most of the time as this distinction is of little practical importance to the foreign learners anyway. Both types of sequences are an essential part of effective communication.