Which term describes expressions that cannot be understood from their separate words and must be learned as a whole (e.g., It is raining cats and dogs.)?

• A. Idioms
• B. Context clues
• C. Glossary
• D. Indexes

Answer: (A)

Expressions whose meaning cannot be understood from their individual words alone are idioms. You learn them as a whole because the phrase conveys a meaning different from a literal reading of its parts. For example, “It is raining cats and dogs” doesn’t describe animals falling from the sky; it means it’s pouring rain. Idioms are a kind of figurative language that you often become familiar with through reading and conversation, not by analyzing word-for-word meanings.

Context clues, by contrast, help you infer the meaning of a difficult word from surrounding text. A glossary provides definitions for terms, which can include idioms but isn’t itself about recognizing expressions as phrases with special meanings. An index helps you locate topics in a book and is not about understanding the meanings of phrases.