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Comment by nickff | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

This post is bizarre since you've used idioms in your own comments elsewhere in this very post, but you're asking someone else to not use idioms.

I think it's my first time ever seeing anyone online request someone else to not use idioms. Like a teacher correcting an essay or something.

Nickff - Maybe you could have phrased your response a little differently? Highlighting you had trouble following the OPs post because of all the idioms would have been more effect than demanding they change their approach?

Indeed, I’m also surprised. Glad you’re sticking to your guns. I think you hit the nail on the head. Take the criticism with a pinch of salt. Don’t throw in the towel!

(not /s)

(a) None of those are literary devices; they're all common vocabulary items that you'd expect an illiterate person to be familiar with.

(b) If you are a nonnative speaker, what's the difference between looking up an unfamiliar idiom and an unfamiliar word?

(c) Your pulled quote contains only two idioms. My best guess is that you're calling face value an idiom, but it is a transparent construction that means exactly what you'd expect if you knew the words face¹ and value.²

¹ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/face noun 5(a)(1)

² https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/value noun 1; 8

“Face value” is a reference to currency, postage stamps, bank-notes, and stock certificates, which have a value printed on their face, but which are not always actually worth that amount. I am a native speaker, but excessive use of idioms makes it hard to understand what someone is actually trying to say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_value

...what is your comment supposed to be relevant to? You didn't refute any point.

(a) These are all common vocabulary items;

(b) If you are a native speaker who needs to look up a lot of words, what makes these different? ;

What would you say if you saw a reference to someone as a "Svengali"? That is a literary allusion. It can't be an idiom because it's only one word long. Do you think it's an idiom anyway? In what sense?

It's possible to understand face value as metaphorically referring to the face value of a coin, or as directly referring to the value that any given object or event appears or purports to have on its face, but in either case it won't be an idiom.

> but excessive use of idioms makes it hard to understand what someone is actually trying to say

This is just false. From a communications or a vocabulary perspective, there is no difference between "idioms" and "words".

Is “confidently wrong” an idiom?

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