Editing Idiom (section)

==Compositionality==
[[File:Donato Barcaglia, Liebe macht blind, Ausschnitt.jpg|thumb|''[[wikt:love is blind|Love is blind]]''—an idiom meaning a person who is in love can see no faults or imperfections in the person whom they love<ref>{{cite book|editor=Elizabeth Knowles|title=The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2006|isbn=9780191578564|pages=302–3|quote=the saying is generally used to mean that a person is often unable to see faults in the one they love.}}</ref>]]

In [[linguistics]], idioms are usually presumed to be [[figures of speech]] contradicting the [[principle of compositionality]]. That compositionality is the key notion for the analysis of idioms emphasized in most accounts of idioms.<ref>Radford (2004:187f.)</ref><ref>Portner (2005:33f).</ref> This principle states that the meaning of a whole should be constructed from the meanings of the parts that make up the whole. In other words, one should be in a position to understand the whole if one understands the meanings of each of the parts that make up the whole.

For example, if the phrase "Fred ''kicked the bucket''" is understood compositionally, it means that Fred has literally kicked an actual, physical bucket. The idiomatic reading, however, is non-compositional: it means that Fred has died. Arriving at the idiomatic reading from the literal reading is unlikely for most speakers. What this means is that the idiomatic reading is, rather, stored as a single [[lexical item]] that is now largely independent of the literal reading.

In [[phraseology]], idioms are defined as a sub-type of [[Phraseme#Non-compositional phrasemes: Idioms|phraseme]], the meaning of which is not the regular sum of the meanings of its component parts.<ref>Mel'čuk (1995:167–232).</ref> John Saeed defines an idiom as [[collocation|collocated]] words that became affixed to each other until metamorphosing into a [[Fossilization (linguistics)|fossilised term]].<ref>For Saeed's definition, see Saeed (2003:60).</ref> This collocation of words redefines each component word in the [[word-group]] and becomes an ''idiomatic expression''. Idioms usually do not translate well; in some cases, when an idiom is translated directly word-for-word into another language, either its meaning is changed or it is meaningless.

When two or three words are conventionally used together in a particular sequence, they form an [[irreversible binomial]]. For example, a person may be ''left high and dry'', but never ''left dry and high''. Not all irreversible binomials are idioms, however: ''chips and dip'' is irreversible, but its meaning is straightforwardly derived from its components.