# Why do idioms exist?



## Lindsey Star

I mean, why can't everyone just be literal?


----------



## Yendred

Because we aren't machines.


----------



## Roxxxannne

And we'd need a bigger vocabulary.


----------



## Ballenero

Lindsey Star said:


> just be literal


Do you like poetry?


----------



## Awwal12

Roxxxannne said:


> And we'd need a bigger vocabulary.


And/or our speech would have been much less compact.


----------



## Hulalessar

Lindsey Star said:


> I mean, why can't everyone just be literal?


Idioms are one of the manifestations of the sum of the parts often being different from the whole.


----------



## Penyafort

That's a bit like why not reducing all the vocabulary to the 65 words called semantic primes? Well, mainly because even if we could express everything with just 65 words by means of literal definitions, it would take us more time than just using a new word. Which is why news words and idioms are invented every year.


----------



## Dymn

Also fixed expressions seem more autoritative than literally saying what you mean. "Time is important" is just an opinion, "time is money" means your views are supported by popular wisdom.


----------



## Roxxxannne

Dymn said:


> Also fixed expressions seem more autoritative than literally saying what you mean. "Time is important" is just an opinion, "time is money" means your views are supported by popular wisdom.


And 'time is money' expresses something about time that is different from 'time is important.' For one thing, it tells you something about the role of money in the speaker's culture.


----------



## Sobakus

A fundamental part of human language, and human nature as well, is creativity. Without the capacity to create new meanings no language is possible in our universe. It would only be possible in a static universe where nothing new is created and everything in existence already has a word for it that describes it fully and comprehensively such that nothing can possibly be added.

Even in such a static unverse, a creativity-free language would be massively inefficient: idioms combine a lot of meaning into a few words, and without them one would have to comprehensively describe the entire network of meanings and associations that underlie them.

Human creativity also manifsts itself on the receiving end, in the love of interpreting meanings and solving problems. The meaning of idioms isn't fixed hard and fast, but is open to interpretation, so their hearer/reader is involved in a creative process. A language without idioms would require a species that not only has no love for creative interpretation and problem-solving, but a strong aversion, because even with a neutral attitude, idioms would still spontaneously arise for reasons of efficiency and compressing meaning.


----------



## Mahaodeh

Dymn said:


> Also fixed expressions seem more autoritative than literally saying what you mean. "Time is important" is just an opinion, "time is money" means your views are supported by popular wisdom.


Not to _split hairs_, but is _time is money_ actually an idiom?

My understanding is that an idiom is a statement that has a meaning that departs from the literal meaning of the words. So _splitting hairs_ is an idiom because I’m not actually splitting hairs, but there is a meaning understood by using these two words that actually has nothing to do with hair, whether split or not.

On the other hand _time is money_ is in fact literal since wasting time costs money. Even when _money_ is not used literally and used only as a metaphor for _cost_, _money_ remains literal. At least I’m unaware of any meaning these three words have that departs significantly from the literal meanings of the individual words.

I would say that _time is money_ is a proverb.

Having said that, I believe that what Subakus said applies to proverbs, adages, sayings, metaphors, similes …etc. as well as idioms.


----------



## Welsh_Sion

You've already demonstrated that we can't be literal in your opening title.

'Existing' pre-supposes some living, extant state. And it's difficult to think of something as inanimate as an idiom as 'existing', unless we are thinking non-literally, that is, metaphorically, and comparing their 'existence' to our own of breathing and regular heart beats.

Idioms 'are' all around us - and in all languages. How bland and boring our own human 'existence' would be if we were always 'literal', even assuming we could be.

This should lead on to a discussion about the _inappropriateness_ of 'literal', as well, I feel.

How many of us are _literally '_glued to our seats watching this thread develop'? (The latter part of this sentence also to be taken non-literally - threads don't really develop like plants and animals and humans. They're just organic pieces of prose thrown together but those of us having a passion for (learning) languages and about language more generally.


----------



## Sobakus

Mahaodeh said:


> On the other hand _time is money_ is in fact literal since wasting time costs money.


What you write is in fact a perfect example of how ubiquotous idioms and metaphors are, and how invisible to the speakers. “Time is money” is a prototypical example of a metaphor as well as an idiom – it's amply discussed in the literature on _conceptual metaphors__._ “wasting time costs money” is likewise a metaphor. Time is a dimension, like space (distance). You cannot give or take time, touch it or see it. Any manipulations with time that you can conceive of are metaphorical.


Mahaodeh said:


> I would say that _time is money_ is a proverb.


Quoth Wikipedia:


> The difference is that an idiomatic phrase involves figurative language in its components, while in a proverbial phrase the figurative meaning is the extension of its literal meaning. Some experts classify proverbs and proverbial phrases as types of idioms.


----------



## Sobakus

Welsh_Sion said:


> 'Existing' pre-supposes some living, extant state. And it's difficult to think of something as inanimate as an idiom as 'existing', unless we are thinking non-literally, that is, metaphorically, and comparing their 'existence' to our own of breathing and regular heart beats.


I'm afraid this isn't true – the main meaning of _exist_ has nothing to do with being alive or an organism. It means “to be (there), have being or reality, to be found” and is applied to any features of objective reality, especially those that can be a subject of scientific inquiry, like the Universe, stars, living beings and elementary particles. In contrast to what you describe with “breathing and regular heart beats,” existing is seen as static and an either/or fact, not a dynamic analog process.

The meaning of _exist_ “to live under difficult conditions” is figurative. The original meaning in Latin is “to come out, stand out, appear”.


----------



## Terio

Roxxxannne said:


> And 'time is money' expresses something about time that is different from 'time is important.' For one thing, it tells you something about the role of money in the speaker's culture.


From a logical point of view, *money is time* means exactly the same:Try to convince a businessman or a politician...


----------



## Dymn

Mahaodeh said:


> At least I’m unaware of any meaning these three words have that departs significantly from the literal meanings of the individual words.


_Time costs money _would be correct, but time is not _literally _money. Also, I don't know how this expression is used in English, but in Spanish the equivalent means that time is precious, not in an economic sense, for example it's something you could say so that somebody spends more time with their family. Maybe it's because the expression is _el tiempo es oro _"time is gold", so the usage is obviously metaphoric.


----------



## Penyafort

Dymn said:


> means that time is precious, not in an economic sense, for example it's something you could say so that somebody spends more time with their family.


Well, that's a very Southern European way of seeing things.


----------



## 99bottles

To prevent me from learning English and writing my books. The universe doesn't want me to succeed in becoming an author.


----------



## Roxxxannne

99bottles said:


> To prevent me from learning English and writing my books. The universe doesn't want me to succeed in becoming an author.



There are gazillions of Greek idiomatic expressions that make no literal sense whatsoever to an English speaker, e.g. κάνω τη πάπια: literally 'I make/do the duck', which apparently means 'I keep quiet so as to not get in trouble.'


----------



## Penyafort

Roxxxannne said:


> There are gazillions of Greek idiomatic expressions that make no literal sense whatsoever to an English speaker, e.g. κάνω τη πάπια: literally 'I make/do the duck', which apparently means 'I keep quiet so as to not get in trouble.'


And the funny thing is how they can be false friends too. To 'do the duck' in Catalan (_fer l'ànec_) means to drown, to die.


----------

