Ordsprog og idiomer

Abstract

In this article, I focus on the difference between proverbs and idioms which derive from proverbs. Both proverbs and idioms are hard to defi ne, as it is also difficult to categorize a specific expression being either a proverb or an idiom. Fixed form is one feature of proverbs as well as that a proverb appears as a sentence, but today one can easily find variations and/or modifications of proverbs. To see how those idioms which derive from proverbs are used in actual speech, I have collected examples from a number of corpuses. Some of these idioms are truncated and, being quite conventional, used almost only in their reduced form. Some idioms lose the negations which the original proverbs show, but they still carry their original meaning implicated by the proverbs. A proverb, as a whole, is lexicalized and this is why one can use part of the proverb and/or the proverb modified. However, when a part or a component of a proverb becomes strongly lexicalized and no longer connected with its original meaning as a proverb, then such an expression can be regarded as an idiom.