What's the difference between idiom and slang?

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.

Slang


Definition:

  • () imp. of Sling. Slung.
  • (n.) Any long, narrow piece of land; a promontory.
  • (n.) A fetter worn on the leg by a convict.
  • (n.) Low, vulgar, unauthorized language; a popular but unauthorized word, phrase, or mode of expression; also, the jargon of some particular calling or class in society; low popular cant; as, the slang of the theater, of college, of sailors, etc.
  • (v. t.) To address with slang or ribaldry; to insult with vulgar language.
  • () of Sling

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Moreover, are schoolchildren thoughtlessly taunting each other with slang such as: "That's just straight"?
  • (2) Chicago police say the number 300 is street slang for Black Disciple gang.
  • (3) Downing Street, reluctant to become involved in a slanging match , offered no response to the announcement last night.
  • (4) (You need to know that "dog" is pejorative slang in America for an ill-favoured woman).
  • (5) Ferdinand directed a jibe at a Twitter follower containing the word ’sket’, which is understood to be a slang term taken to mean a promiscuous girl or woman.
  • (6) As a portrait of modern society, it is startlingly astute – a scene with two schoolgirls arguing at a bus stop is uncanny in its depiction of south London slang, and speech mannerisms, and all the more notable because this is so rarely done accurately and with empathy.
  • (7) Her videos have been "accessorised with black dancers" and she uses US street slang like "rachet" (ghetto-diva) in her lyrics.
  • (8) It was recommended that more attempts should be made to subdivide measures of social deviancy by means of slang as there is some evidence of possible further differentiation of subcultural types by means of slang.
  • (9) It was a piece of rag on which was written a message describing a "TOS", jailhouse slang for "terminate on sight".
  • (10) But it emerged afterwards he was simply using snowboarding slang, meaning to "go big".
  • (11) It was the first time in my life I'd been around guys talking in slang and patois – stuff that had been passed down – and I was fascinated.
  • (12) In my role as a journalist working for TÊTU , the biggest French gay-oriented magazine, I used to think French society was mature enough to face such a debate without resorting to slanging matches.
  • (13) In Alain's work, the mixture of graceful, sometimes slightly quaint French, Congolese rhythm and Parisian street slang is very complex, but it is a complexity achieved by him as a writer.
  • (14) According to one reader, who for the sake of his career shall remain nameless, ecstasy tablets on Merseyside at the time owed their nickname to a piece of rhyming slang derived from the former Liverpool defender Gary Ablett.
  • (15) All the classic ingredients of tabloid fare are there: vast wealth, broken promises, honour, shame, "krysha" – Russian for "roof" but a slang term meaning "protection" – and a few chateaux, yachts and flamboyant women thrown in too.
  • (16) Richard McLaren receives ‘deluge’ of requests after Wada doping report Read more “I don’t want to get into a slanging match with the IOC about the way they’ve handled it.
  • (17) It turned into a slanging match in which the Iranians came to the assistance of the Russians.
  • (18) Indeed, the recent dustup about supposedly fixed parliamentary elections was essentially a slanging-match between the Blairite pressure group Progress (largely funded by Lord Sainsbury, and founded by people close to such über-New Labour types as Peter Mandelson), and the trade union Unite, whose leader Len McCluskey has recently been heard bemoaning the power held by "Oxbridge Blairites".
  • (19) Jungle don mature” [the jungle has matured] goes the Nigerian slang meaning: “the game is on.” It is a phrase on the lips of more than one Nigerian political commentator and aptly describes the tension as Africa’s most populous nation gears up for presidential elections just eight weeks away.
  • (20) Conrad also took Kimball to task for his lack of understanding of much of the slang Tsarnaev used in his tweets.