# Idiomatic Sayings

Let us now look more closely at what is strictly considered to be an idiom. There are two kinds, idiomatic expression (szólásmód) and idiomatic simile (szóláshasonlat). These are more elementary forms, and almost approach the mere stylistic formation of words, although they are emphatically differentiated by their consolidated form and their contentual excess. The simplest formula is the idiomatic expression, an idiomatic formula consisting of one part. It is characterized by the many kinds of varied ideas used in place of simple linguistic expressions. Here, for example, are a few of the common sayings applied to a miser: “he beats the penny to his teeth”; “he keeps count even of his gulps”; “he would make two of one coin if he could”; “he would skin even the stone if it only had skin”; “he would charge rent even for air”; etc. It can be felt that these common sayings express a complex judgement of the community and that they are not simply elementary linguistic forms.

Another kind of idiomatic saying is the idiomatic simile. Its name implies that it seemingly is one of the species of simile and could also appear as some simple, linguistic, stylistic device. However, the idiomatic simile does not belong within the circle of simple, arbitrary similes, something which exists in language and poetry in innumerable varieties, but lives in the consciousness of the community and revives at given times in its fixed form. This constancy, this fixity and communal character lift it out of the world of similes. Sometimes it appears that there is hardly any difference between the ordinary simile and the idiomatic simile, but still the two types, the linguistic (pure simile) and the folk poetic (idiomatic simile), can be distinctively separated. “Blinks like one who has dust in his eyes”, for example, is only a simple simile, but if we say “blinks like the Miskolc kocsonya” (cold pork in aspic), we have already used an idiomatic simile, which has a consolidated foundation, and an emotional, humorous background that comes alive in the entire community alike. Of course both kinds of similes in their consolidated form always come alive and gain shape by being related to certain persons and events, so that in themselves they are incomplete: {596.} “X.Y. sleeps like a marmot”, etc., “X.Y. would skin even the stone”. Therefore, the structure of the simile is in open contrast to that of the proverb, which is a closed formal and contextual unit in itself.