On the subject of Idiom Arlo Bates in his book "On Writing English" has
some very forcible remarks. Says he, "An idiom is the personal---if the
word may be allowed---the personal idiosyncrasy of a language.
It is a method of speech wherein the genius of the race making the
language shows itself as differing from that of all other peoples.
What style is to the man, that is idiom to the race. It is the
crystalization in verbal forms of peculiarities of race temperament---
perhaps even of race eccentricities . . . . . English which is not
idiomatic becomes at once formal and lifeless, as if the tongue were
already dead and its remains embalmed in those honorable sepulchres, the
philological dictionaries. On the other hand, English which goes too
far, and fails of a delicate distinction between what is really and
essentially idiomatic and what is colloquial, becomes at once vulgar and
utterly wanting in that subtle quality of dignity for which there is no
better term than _distinction_."*
*As examples of idioms Mr. Bates gives the following: A ten-foot
(instead of ten-feet) pole; the use of the "flat adverb"
or adjective form in such expressions as "speak loud.
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