Idioms collocation and fixed expression

                                  Idioms , collocations and fixed expression 

11)    What are idioms?

An expression like turn up ( meaning arrive )break event (meaning make neither a profit nor a loss or a can of worms (meaning a complicated problem ) can be difficult to understand because its neaning is differnet from the meaning of the separate words in the expression .( if you know break and even this does not help you at to understand break even.);Expression like these are called ,idioms .Idioms are usually special to one language and cannot be translated world for word (though related ;anguges amy share some idioms)

2 2) verbs with particles or prepositions

Common short verbs like bring ,come ,do,get,give,go,have,keep,make,put,

And take are very often used with preposition or adverb particles (e.g.on.off,up,away) to make two word verbs .These are called prepositional verbs or phrasak verbs and many of them are idiomatic

Can you look after the cats while I am away?

She just doesen’tknow how to bring up children.

I gave up chemistry because I didn’t like it.

Many of these two word verbs are especially common in informal speech and writing Compare.

What time are you planning to turn up ?(informal)

P;ease let us know when you p;an to arrive (more formal)

Just keep on till you get to the crossroads (informal Continue as dar as the crossroads .(formal)

 3) collocation (conventional word combinations)

We can say I fully understand, but not I fully like, but not I rather understand. I firmly believed but not I firmly think. Somebody can be a heavey smoker or a devoted friend, but not a devoted smoker or a heave friend. Expression like these are also idiomatic in a sense. They are easy to understand but not so easy for a learner to produce correctly.one can think of many adjective that might be used with smoke to say that somebody smokes a lot for example big, strong hard fierce made devoted.It just happens that  a English speaker have chosen to use heavy.,and one has to know this in order to express the idea naturally and correctly. These conventional combinations of words are called, collocations, and all languages have large  number of them.