Do you use a lot of idiomatic expressions in ordinary conversation?

A conversation without idioms is about as useful as a chocolate teapot! But I’ll give you a penny for your thoughts on the subject. That is unless of course you are at your wits end and have an axe to grind. :P

I use them quite a bit. What’s really disconcerting is when the people I’m talking with are too young (or possibly uneducated) to know what I’m talking about. This happened recently with “peanut gallery” (although that may well be an old pop culture reference instead of an actual idiom).

All the time. I occasionally mix them up, too. Today I said, “It doesn’t happen at the drop of a dime.” Hat, I meant hat.

Conversation wouldn’t be nearly so colorful without them, would it?

@laureth: That happens to me all the time with my kids and their friends. It’s hysterical when they look at me with that quizzical look.

Although I consider myself a very articulate person, I don’t include many idioms in my everyday conversations and comments but instead rely on a well developed vocabulary that I’ve built through the years. I guess some could interpret that to mean that I am ‘too big for my britches’ when I try to sound well informed and educated.

@Bluefreedom Do your friends tease you about your vocabulary? My ex-husband and most of my friends tease me about mine. What is UP with that?

@augustlan, I get that all the time at work!

What I really can’t stand is when I hear, “Wow, you use big words!”. >:(

@DrasticDreamer – That reminds me! Someone once said, “Wow! You speak in complete sentences!”

@laureth …. Ugh! I give it ten, fifteen years, before the movie “Idiocracy” starts coming true.

@augustlan. Yes, I actually have had friends and both of my brothers tease me about my vocabulary. It’s funny isn’t it?

@laureth. Sometimes I can be overly verbose here on Fluther and also when I chat with friends and I actually had a co-worker ask me one time, “Do you always talk in paragraphs?” I didn’t know what to say to that.

Idioms are more fun than a box full of hyenas!

*In addition to idioms, simile and metaphor can be nearly as communicable as the plague!

I tend to because my family tends to and I am also in college and have found that others do seem to notice it more. Though I am also fairly well spoken and I just remember things easily which may be why they slip into my conversations, because my parents used them and I remembered them. Also… @laureth I think the peanut gallery is indeed a pop culture reference that originates from early public performances (vaudeville maybe?) when the lower classes would heckle and throw peanuts at the performers. Hence “no comments from the peanut gallery”. :)

Neat! Thanks. I thought I remembered something like that.

haha no problem. I am a fountain of useless information!

Better than a useless fountain!

I would like to know idiomatic expressions in French. I feel stupid when I speak en Français to French people, and it’s stilted textbook language. :/

@all One of my friends (who always teases me about what she calls ‘Lisa Words’) loaned me a book to read. While still in the first chapter, I began to notice all the ‘big words’ were underlined in pencil. Sure enough, she had marked all the ‘Lisa Words’ in the book, just to give me a little more shit about it!

While I’ve come to accept the teasing, and know they mean no harm, why is it funny to be well-spoken? When exactly did ‘intellectual’ become a bad word?

@augustlan. Maybe ‘2 dollar words’ (as I’ve heard people call them) sound funny to certain people because they wouldn’t normally expect you to talk that way. It could also be that those on the receiving end of the conversation don’t know the definition of some of the big words and that is amusing in some way because it sounds strange to them.

I can’t help it sometimes. It goes with the territory of a southern heritage where language is as flowery as an overgrown English garden.

I like precision in language.

this is really interesting and funny. does she go to a school that is not in your area or out of state? also idioms can get lost over time maybe your family is keeping the older ones alive that the youngin’s in college aren’t familiar with…?

I use a lot of idioms and people my own age give me weird looks because they’re too young to know what I’m talking about.

re: teasing for “big” words—I get that a lot, too. Which is especially sad because I dumb myself down for the general public. It’s funny, you can tell when I’m starting to get drunk (or even just extremely overtired) because I forget to censor myself and start using words that actually are pretty big.

@alive, she goes to an instate school, about 2 hours away. I wonder.

Is the pope catholic?

Idiom is as idiom does.