Idiom
In 15th-century English, "Nimrod" had come to mean "tyrant". In 20th-century American English, the term is now commonly used to mean "dimwitted or stupid fellow", a usage first recorded in 1932 and popularized by Bugs Bunny, who refers to the hunter Elmer Fudd as "nimrod", possibly as an ironic connection between "mighty hunter" and "poor little Nimrod", i.e. Fudd.
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Famous quotes containing the word idiom:
“Psychobabble is ... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It’s an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)
“The “sayings” of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech—it is a gift from heart to heart.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“James Joyce is the new Euphues: the melting pot of the language and of present literary idiom and banality.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)