The Origins of Idioms

One of our recent News Alerts, and article from Courant.com considers the ways in which idioms develop. According to the article: "[a]n idiom starts as a phrase, becomes an idiom when it catches on, and then dies as a cliché." and "'[i]diom' is a very loose term that can mean anything from the colloquial to a metaphor."

Idioms often originate within subcultures before spreading to the population at large. For example, the word cool is generally considered to have originated as a part of jazz culture before spreading to the larger world community.

A lot of idioms come from a specific event or a specific detail of history now lost. It seems interesting to me that in such a manner our language itself is a record of our history. Even long after record players have fallen out of use, people will still use the phrase "like a broken record" to refer to someone saying something over and over again.

To look into idioms further, I went to an idiom dictionary (http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/). Here, I noticed that a great many idioms deal with food. A search for egg returns "as sure as eggs," "a bad egg," "can't boil an egg," "a chicken and egg situation," "a curate's egg," "a good egg," "have egg on your face," "kill the goose that lays the golden egg," "lay an egg" "a nest egg," "over-egg the pudding," "put all your eggs in one basket," "teach your grandmother to suck eggs," and "can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." Perhaps this reflects the greater significance eggs held in the past as a large part of many people's diets, perhaps it simply goes to show that idioms often relate to common things such as foods. Whatever, the reason for such an abundance of egg idioms, even in considering this brief selection from the dictionary, is is possible to gain further insight into the origins of idioms. "Kill the goose that lays the golden egg" comes from a fairy tale, "put all your eggs in one basket" comes from one of Aesop's fables, and "a chicken and egg situation" comes from ancient philosophical debate. This goes to show that some idioms are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, and that they embody a large part of our culture within them.

In class we've discussed the possibility that idioms affect our psychology through metaphorical meanings, causing us to associate otherwise disparate concepts. The full psychological impact of such metaphors remains questionable, but the above examples nevertheless show that idioms are a large part of our cultural consciousness and often preserve within them some long-forgotten aspect of our history.