What's the difference between idiom and idiot?

Idiom


Definition:

  • (n.) The syntactical or structural form peculiar to any language; the genius or cast of a language.
  • (n.) An expression conforming or appropriate to the peculiar structural form of a language; in extend use, an expression sanctioned by usage, having a sense peculiar to itself and not agreeing with the logical sense of its structural form; also, the phrase forms peculiar to a particular author.
  • (n.) Dialect; a variant form of a language.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Case studies of two anorectic women from Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, show that for some anorectics self-starvation is encoded in religious idioms and symbols about the body, food, and self.
  • (2) Ali Motahari, an influential MP, said after Trump’s win that his presidency was to Iran’s advantage because Democrats “would chop your head with cotton”, a Persian idiom which means killing someone with kindness, and reflecting a view that the Islamic Republic has historically coped better with the Republicans.
  • (3) This study compared the comprehension of 20 idioms of normal children with children exhibiting mild mental retardation.
  • (4) Our hypothesis is that they can reach an idiomatic competence if idioms are presented within a rich informational environment allowing children to grasp their figurative sense.
  • (5) A contemporary idiom blurs not only Flaubert's precision but the shocking and revolutionary nature of the work, which makes more sense when set back in its own time and context.
  • (6) Six experiments examined why some idioms can be syntactically changed and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John laid down the law can be passivized as The law was laid down by John), while other idioms cannot be syntactically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket cannot be passivized into The bucket was kicked by John).
  • (7) An attempt is made to show how personal concerns of the dreamers are mediated through the culturally shared idiom of the saint.
  • (8) "A dialogue of the deaf", as it has been translated into an English idiom, is a conversation between two people who cannot listen to each other.
  • (9) But they were not tired-and-emotional, and for such mannerly foreigners to have been given a practical definition of that local idiom would have been gilding the lily.
  • (10) In Experiment 1, idioms referring to the same temporal stage of a conceptual prototype were judged to be more similar in meaning than idioms referring to different temporal stages.
  • (11) These results suggest that adults with unilateral brain damage can activate and retrieve familiar idiomatic forms, and that their idiom-interpretation deficits most likely reflect impairment at some later stage of information processing.
  • (12) Experiment 3 was designed to investigate children's production of idioms as compared to the comprehension abilities explored in experiments 1 and 2.
  • (13) Our thesis was that the syntactic behavior of idioms is determined, to a large extent, but speakers' assumptions about the way in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole.
  • (14) By establishing a broad understanding of the problem of knowledge, this new view of epistemology is developed within the idiom of each psychiatric approach.
  • (15) When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.'
  • (16) Although this idiom is necessarily expressed through language, it is more than language.
  • (17) Hickman parries this by pointing to such non-rock Record Store Day releases as a 7-inch single by One Direction and three albums of classical music conducted by Herbert von Karajan, but it seems to me that the point is almost incontrovertible: to use the vocabulary of the 1980s, much of the energy that goes into the event is unmistakably rockist, and the festivities often feel like a day-long benefit for an entire musical idiom: Live Aid meets the Antiques Roadshow, with the aim of keeping the guitars ringing out for another year.
  • (18) Dolezal does not discuss her own ethnicity in detail in her numerous writings on civil rights issues, but in several pieces she uses idioms such as “our cultural memory” when speaking about African American history.
  • (19) "You have a political and media elite who have an idiom by which they describe politics.
  • (20) Experiment 6 showed that the metaphoric information reflected in the lexical makeup of idioms also determined the metaphoric appropriateness of idioms in certain contexts.

Idiot


Definition:

  • (n.) A man in private station, as distinguished from one holding a public office.
  • (n.) An unlearned, ignorant, or simple person, as distinguished from the educated; an ignoramus.
  • (n.) A human being destitute of the ordinary intellectual powers, whether congenital, developmental, or accidental; commonly, a person without understanding from birth; a natural fool; a natural; an innocent.
  • (n.) A fool; a simpleton; -- a term of reproach.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Thrasher Mitchell: Then why is that idiot Bernard Hogan-Howe getting a knighthood when his plebby plods tried to stitch me up?
  • (2) According to Deborah Mattinson, his pollster, Brown " loved slogans and believed them to be imbued with a mystical power capable of persuading the most intransigent voter", and therefore went a bundle on them – not least " A future fair for all ", the surreal dud with which Labour went to the country in 2010, following 2005's equally idiotic " forward not back ".
  • (3) But cowardly useful idiots of Warwick have banned @MaryamNamazie.” On Sunday night the union released a statement reversing the decision, which it stated had gone against normal procedures.
  • (4) Aren't the older generation always going to think kids are idiots?
  • (5) Treating voters like idiots doesn't often work – so the posters with a picture of a sick baby, saying, "She needs a new cardiac facility not an alternative voting system", or of the soldier, reading, "He needs bulletproof vests, not an alternative voting system", must surely be an insult too far to the public's intelligence.
  • (6) The boss of a successful US hedge fund has quit the industry with an extraordinary farewell letter dismissing his rivals as over-privileged "idiots" and thanking "stupid" traders for making him rich.
  • (7) Who can complain of physical fear, of the nightmare of a baby eating its way out of your abdomen, of the loss of professional autonomy, staring at a stranger's idiotic grin?
  • (8) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Flynn in 2016: ‘When you’re given immunity, you’ve probably committed a crime’ – video Vladimir Putin’s Russia is generally regarded as America’s mightiest enemy, however idiotic this might be.
  • (9) Whatever they'd gone through in the past, they were idiots for not understanding the modern world.
  • (10) If he was on the verge of becoming a "national treasure" to the minuscule percentage of the nation who could identify him by name were they shown a picture of him, this latest episode will have reminded them that there really are bigger and better idiots in public life to get behind.
  • (11) This is the most pathetic thing I’ve seen in my whole time in the United States Senate … I think they ought to stop posturing and acting like idiots.” Sean Spicer , the White House press secretary, branded the Democrats’ actions “embarrassing”.
  • (12) I picture myself at 80, the idiot who did something faddish instead of what people had always done and can never retire.
  • (13) But it is often said that only an idiot fights a war on two fronts.
  • (14) April 14, 2015 _Ds73_ (@darkeststar73) @sueperkins complete idiots think they can say what they like, glad we're not all the same !
  • (15) Many on the Right still view it as the epitome of all that was irresponsible, idiotic and dangerous about the Sixties, while many on the terminally fractured Left still mourn 1968 as the last great moment of revolutionary possibility.
  • (16) "But she also divides the critics like that other old-school oddball, Norman Wisdom, who was written off as a witless, irritating idiot with a penchant for falling over by some, and seen as a comic genius by others."
  • (17) "Oh, it says, 'You'll regret this one day, you idiot.'"
  • (18) 12.25pm: "Björn Lubbers mentioned in his email you posted at 10am that 'the Dutchies are a very friendly, hospitable and tolerant people, but humans will be humans and idiots will be idiots ...', emails Karin Prill.
  • (19) Every magistrate hears idiotic excuses from stupid criminals, but this is the DWP's unsubtle nudge that all claimants are fraudsters beneath the skin.
  • (20) I'll be cheering for Germany, and should we advance, hide my Germany-hat as deeply as possible in my backpack on the way home ... the Dutchies are a very friendly, hospitable and tolerant people, but humans will be humans and idiots will be idiots ... my cousin, also living in the Netherlands, is taking off his German license plate off his car and parking it deep inside an underground garage ...