The Student Room Group

Idioms

This may seem like a stupid question.
When a woman is adressed as Mrs Husband's name. Is that a form of idiomatic language?
Why would it be idiomatic? Idiomatic is like "it's raining cats and dogs"

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Reply 2
It's a common adress, in the past. I thought it might fall under idioms. But thanks.
Original post by Hashbrown98
It's a common adress, in the past. I thought it might fall under idioms. But thanks.


It doesn't make a difference what grammatical tense the sentence or phrase is.

An idiom is a fixed group of words that has a figurative meaning, though sometimes literal.

So referring to a woman by her married name is just normal. There's no linguistic name for it.
Reply 4
Original post by The Empire Odyssey
It doesn't make a difference what grammatical tense the sentence or phrase is.

An idiom is a fixed group of words that has a figurative meaning, though sometimes literal.

So referring to a woman by her married name is just normal. There's no linguistic name for it.

Ahhh, damn it. I messed up terribly. I had to write the worst exam, I've ever written during the second most important exam. But surely it must fall under pragmatics, as referring to woman as Mrs John Doe rather than Jane Doe, is not as common.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Hashbrown98
Ahhh, damn it. I messed up terribly. I had to write the worst exam, I've ever written during the second most important exam. But surely it must fall under pragmatics, as referring to woman as Mrs John Doe rather than Jane Doe, is not as common.


Thats not really pragmatics either hon. Pragmatics is all about context surrounding language like turn taking in conversation, political correctness, etc.

Well its nost common in 19th century literature and life. Anything before 1900 the phrase like that is most common. For instance in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pips older sister is referred to as Mrs Joe rather than her 1st name.

Its not common after C19th.

I dont know what linguistic group it belongs to, but it isnt pragmatics.

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