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Definition of Idiom
An idiom is a phrase that conveys a figurative meaning that is difficult or impossible to understand based solely on a literal interpretation of the words in the phrase. For... read full definition
An idiom is a phrase that conveys a figurative meaning that is difficult or impossible to understand based solely on a literal interpretation of the... read full definition
An idiom is a phrase that conveys a figurative meaning that is difficult or impossible to understand based solely on... read full definition
14. Differing Weights and Measures
Explanation and Analysis—Quite the Dish:
Colorful idioms figure throughout The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, and hardly with greater frequency than in Fatty Davis’s portions of the story. Chicken Hill’s self-made entrepreneur speaks and thinks with all manner of imaginative turns of speech, as when he recounts his cousin Gene’s conversation about his future wife in Part 2, Chapter 14:
Gene, unlike Chulo, set his sights on Philly, where he’d stumbled into a high-society Negro girl whose father owned a thriving dry-cleaning business in the city’s Nicetown section. The father dropped dead of a heart attack soon after the two met, and Gene, a bright, enterprising soul, suddenly found himself full of lovelorn desire, his heart full of yearning, overwhelmed with profound, ravenous longing for a girl who was, he told Fatty, “quite the dish.”
Related Themes:
