Idioms and Phrases Questions

Rules For Idioms and Phrases Questions – 

• A phrase, contradictory of a common sentence, does not take a subject or a verb with it. Therefore, phrases do not show or give a meaning of a complete sentence, they are however unit of a main sentence.
• There are approximately eight kinds of phrases which you should know. They include – noun, prepositional, infinitive, gerund, verb, participial, appositive and absolute phrases.
• There is a big difference between idioms and clichés. It is important to not use clichés in place of idioms.
• Idioms require particular preposition and we cannot add synonyms or replace the preposition with other. E.g. – Hit the nail on its nail. (Here, ‘on’ cannot be replaced).

Let’s now see some examples of both the sections below:

Idioms –

For example:

• Being comfortable in one’s skin –
  If you take the literal meaning it would be absurd to even explain. However the actual meaning here that we can extract is ‘the feeling of being comfortable with yourself’. One’s skin means own skin or to simplify ‘yourself’
• Beat around the bush –
  With this idiom it doesn’t mean to actually take a bat and beat the bush but to talk about everything around the topic and try to ignore / avoid the main topic, the person, or a particular thing.

Phrases – 

For Example: 

• Deep down – deeper feelings
  
• Group of men and women – group of men and group of women
• Challenge of imagination – challenging to be imaginative
• Latin and Greek –  some strange meaning

Here are some practice questions of Idioms and Phrases –