Examples
- "The Troubles" as a name for decades of violence in Northern Ireland.
- "The Pond" for the Atlantic Ocean ("across the pond"). Similarly, "The Ditch" for the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand.
- "The Recent Unpleasantness," used in the southern United States as an idiom to refer to the American Civil War and its aftermath.
- "Intolerable meiosis!" comments a character in William Golding's Fire Down Below as their ship encounters an iceberg after another character comments, "We are privileged. How many people have seen anything like this?".
- The Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail ("It's just a flesh wound!")
Read more about this topic: Meiosis (figure Of Speech)
Famous quotes containing the word examples:
“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)