Abstract: Idioms formed in the course of the uses of a certain language. They are a kind of particular linguistic expressions with fixed structure conveying their own unique meaning. The idioms mentioned in this thesis are in broad sense, including mottoes phrases, proverbs and two-part allegorical sayings and so on. The differences between Chinese idioms and British idioms reflect the cultural conflicts, so it is necessary to improve the knowledge of idioms and the essence of languages on the base of national cultural settings so as to improve the mutual communication. In this thesis, I mainly illustrate the reasons and the specific differences between Chinese and English idioms from six aspects: geographical conditions and architecture, religions and beliefs, history and literature, values, national psychology and custom and habits in the first part. For the second part, I elaborate three aspects about the usage of idioms such as the flexible usage of idioms, the usage of idioms in concrete context and situation and the usage of idioms in translation.

Key words: idiom; definition; differences; usage; Shakespeare