Colloquialism

Pronounced kuh-LOH-kwee-uh-liz-um.

Colloquialism: Informal, conversational words and phrases characteristic of everyday regional speech.

Colloquialisms pin a voice to a place and a class; one 'y'all' or 'wee' in dialogue does more locating than a paragraph of setting.

Colloquialism examples

• "Huck Finn narrates his whole story in Missouri river-country vernacular, and the novel's voice is the point."

  — Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

• "Holden Caulfield's 'phony' - repeated obsessively - is a colloquialism doing a novel's worth of characterization."

  — The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

• "Gonna, y'all, wee, mate: each one places its speaker on a map."

  — common usage

• "Right so, she said, and that was the meeting over."

  — original example

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