unidiomatic
- adjective
- /ˌʌnˌɪdiˈɑːmətɪk/
- Specialized
:
no idiomático
- Many of his sentences were unidiomatic, causing confusion among those who were fluent in English.
Examples
-
In 1969, he succumbed to unrelenting pressure from Columbia and began to record embarrassingly unidiomatic versions of such rock songs as "Eleanor Rigby," "MacArthur Park," "Something," and "What the World Needs Now."
Academic text (2011) -
On one occasion, he argued that his unidiomatic translation preserved precisely the actual conceptual experience of the Welsh original:
Academic text (1996) -
Nevertheless, scales and other basic patterns are only a starting point, and improvisers who rely heavily on them often create uninteresting and unidiomatic improvisations.
Academic text (1995) -
Unfortunately, their presentation is marred by numerous misspellings, grammatical errors, and unidiomatic uses of prepositions.
Academic text (2003) -
But trying to make Milton idiomatic forced me to discover how necessary his language—syntactically Latinate, defiantly unidiomatic in his own time—is to meaning and to feeling in Paradise Lost.
Academic text (2009) -
The Reverend Arthur Sturdy commented that "the English critics who know nothing about the peasants of West Wales have complimented him upon his unique style, little thinking that it is simply due to unidiomatic translation from the Welsh" (qtd. in Williams, "Birth" 158).
Academic text (1996) -
Her writing was clear but sometimes felt unidiomatic, lacking the natural flow of a native speaker.
-
The student's presentation was filled with unidiomatic phrases that made it difficult for the audience to follow.
Synonyms
∞
2.2
Not common and different from what people expect
101
4.1
Not normal or what people expect
77
6.2
Different from what most people do or accept
52
7.3
Not following the usual rules or customs
27
5.7
Different from what is usual or expected
23
8.1
Not like what is usual or expected
14
3.4
Not following a usual pattern or rule
14
7.4
Not fitting with the things around it and looking strange
1
6.2
Not usual for people or things of the same kind
1
7.0
Not usual and different from what you expect
1
6.7
Not following the usual language rules used in formal speech or writing
1
9.9
Not usual or expected in a situation
Not usual or what most people expect
Not usual or expected
Not following the usual or expected pattern in data
Antonyms
How Idiomatic
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
The word unidiomatic starts with un- meaning 'not' and the rest comes from idiom, a word for a phrase that is natural to native speakers. An idiom comes from an old Greek root meaning 'own' or 'personal', so an idiomatic phrase is the way a language naturally says something. So, unidiomatic means 'not natural' or 'not what native speakers usually say'.