Her wonderful power of seizing on the genius of a language, and becoming for the time a foreigner in spirit, was noticed by all her teachers; her ear was so delicate that no subtile inflection ever escaped her, nor any idiom.

Your readers will observe that even if this momentous meeting was not marked by the usual diplomatic usages, the language is strictly according to the usual diplomatic idiom.

It is important to note this fact, as everything hinges on the "idiom.

Idiom, [Greek: Idioma].

A Dane wrote to Garrick from Copenhagen on Dec. 23, 1769:'There is some of our retinue who, not understanding a word of your language, mimic your gesture and your action: so great an impression did it make upon their minds, the scene of daggers has been repeated in dumb show a hundred times, and those most ignorant of the English idiom can cry out with rapture, "A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse!"' Garrick Corres. i. 375.

The interests of learning require, that the diction of Greece and Rome should be cultivated with care; and he who can write a language with correctness, will be most likely to understand its idiom, its grammar, and its peculiar graces of style.

Johnson had a fund of humour, but he did not know it; nor was he willing to descend to the familiar idiom, and the variety of diction, which that mode of composition required.

There are turns of language which have the stamp of an original Greek idiom and could not have come in through translation.

Indeed among the Injudicious, the Words Delicacy, Idiom, fine Images, Structure of Periods, Genius, Fire, and the rest, made use of with a frugal and comely Gravity, will maintain the Figure of immense Reading, and Depth of Criticism.

Even the native idiom crops out here and there in his verses.

P. de Tchehachoff, the Russian gentleman before named, writes to me in the idiom of a foreigner, from Peoria, on his progress through the western country.

He has written a grammar and dictionary of that idiom, which he writes me he is shortly going to put to press.

In general, I will only say, I have never yet seen the description of any naval fight in the proper terms which are used at sea: and if there be any such, in another language, as that of Lucan in the third of his Pharsalia, yet I could not avail myself of it in the English; the terms of art in every tongue bearing more of the idiom of it than any other words.

Much less then will, what is commonly called learning, serve the purpose; that is, a critical knowledge of ancient languages, and much reading of ancient authors: The greatest critic and most able grammarian of the last age, when he came to apply his learning and criticism to an English author, was frequently at a loss in matters of ordinary use and common construction in his own vernacular idiom.

"The verbs, according to an idiom of our language, or the poet's license, are used in the imperative, agreeing with a nominative of the first or third person."Ib., p. 164.

We have one great novelist who is gifted with the utmost power of rendering the external traits of our town population; and if he could give us their psychological charactertheir conceptions of life, and their emotionswith the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies.

We will not be deterred from giving the Bible to heathenism of any kind when we remember that Sir William Jones has left these words: "The Scriptures contain more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence than could be collected from all other books that were ever composed in any age or in any idiom."

LANDRY, JOSEPH A. Graded French word & idiom book © 29Sep38; AA285459.

POTTLE, FREDERICK A. The idiom of poetry.

The confusion in language: general and personal idiom.

Idiom of the man (ham) By Henry Louis Mencken.

The "From whence came ye?" asked, however, in an Italian idiom, had been answered by "Inghilterra, touching at Lisbon and Gibraltar," all regions beyond distrust, as to the plague, and all happening, at that moment, to give clean bills of health.

But the truth of the matter is, that an artist teaches far more by his mere background and properties, his landscape, his costume, his idiom and techniqueall the part of his work, in short, of which he is probably entirely unconscious, than by the elaborate and pompous moral dicta which he fondly imagines to be his opinions.

The idiom may be expressed more logically by the omission of the que (Littré, "laisser," 20°).

This idiom generally means 'offhand,' but it is undoubtedly used here in the sense of d'abondant, 'moreover,' an expression already antiquated, and usually replaced by the idiom de plus.

Sir- (or Save-) Reverence is an old and very common colloquialism.

[Footnote 1: "Ciao" is a colloquialism, much the same as our own "so long," or "good-bye and good luck!"

" These elements had, however, to use a colloquialism, an "exceedingly rough time.

At the risk of colloquialism, I am tempted to "begin at the beginning" of my own knowledge of Mrs. Eddy, and take, as the point of departure, my first meeting with her and the subsequent development of some degree of familiarity with the work of her life which that meeting inaugurated for me.

A vulgar colloquialism for laying a girl on the grass.

"Then observe the glance," continued Roundjacket, "if I may be permitted to use a colloquialism which is coming into usethere is not that brilliant cut of the eye, which you see in us young fellowsit is all gone, sir!" Verty smiled.

[Fr.], way of speaking, colloquialism. phrase &c 566; figure, trope, metaphor, enallage^, catachresis^; metonymy [Gramm.], synecdoche

colloquialism, informal speech, informal language.

The real case we British have against our lawyers, if I may adopt an expressive colloquialism, is not that they are lawyers, but that they are such infernal lawyers.

I deemed that I gave myself away dirt-cheap,excuse again the colloquialism; the transaction seems to require such a phrase,for there is no doubt that Mr. Mellasys was greatly objectionable.

This conception of "humours," based on a physiology which was already obsolescent, takes heavily from the realism of Jonson's methods, nor does his use of a careful vocabulary of contemporary colloquialism and slang save him from a certain dryness and tediousness to modern readers.

he cried out cheerily, and she was surprised, for Varick seldom made use of any slang or colloquialism.

"As to your question, Mr. Biffin, which I have had no earlier opportunity of answering, I may say that what you were pleased to allude to as my whiskersa colloquialism I do not myself employare entirely impervious to and unaffected by any climatic variations whatsoever.

This is, of course, intentionally cast in a homely style in contrast to the courtliness of the main plot; but Greene, as some of his later works attest, knew the value of strong racy English no less than his friend Nashe, who, in the preface he prefixed to this very work, pushed colloquialism and idiom to the verge of affectation and beyond.

A COLLOQUIALISM is an expression peculiar to familiar conversation.