Idioms Are Created Everyday

Abstract

There is a common false belief that we no longer use idioms in Malay. As such archaic and meaningless idioms continue being taught in schools. For instance we continue teaching "kaki ayam" (literally: chicken claws) to mean being barefooted. Of course this is not readily understood by our children as they have probably only seen frozen clawless chicken in the supermarkets. And as our standard of living goes up, not many people go around barefooted any longer. The possibility of our children seeing a barefooted person and claws of a chicken is rare. Thus, they fail to make sense of the analogy in such an idiom. Hence, they no longer use it.

This paper is a summary of a research paper entitled "Updating a Dictionary of Malay Idioms", presented to a Seminar on Lexicography in Kuala Lumpur in 2005. However its examples are taken from more recent data gathered in an on-going project "Contemporary Malay Idioms".