Deyimler in Context (B2) | Turkish Grammar

A dictionary can tell you that göz atmak means “to glance” — but it cannot show you the suffix it grows when you actually use it, or where it sits in the sentence, or which case the thing you glance at takes. Idioms (deyimler) are not frozen blocks; the verb at their core inflects fully, takes person and tense endings, goes negative, and slots into Turkish word order like any other verb. The short paragraphs below are original texts, written for this guide (not quotations from any published work), built specifically to show common idioms behaving naturally in context. Read each one for the story, then study how the idiom bends to fit.

Paragraph 1: a slow afternoon at the office

Öğleden sonra işler durdu, herkesin canı sıkılmaya başladı.

After noon the work stopped, and everyone started to get bored.

The idiom is canı sıkılmak, literally “one's soul gets squeezed”, meaning “to be bored / fed up”. Notice it is not invariable: canı carries a possessive that agrees with whoever is bored — here herkesin canı (“everyone's soul”). To say “I'm bored” you change the possessive: canım sıkılıyor. The verb sıkılmak then takes the full -mAyA başlamak construction (“began to...”). This is the heart of idiom grammar: the noun half agrees in possession, the verb half conjugates freely. See more body-and-soul idioms at expressions/idioms-body.

Ben de masama oturup eski fotoğraflara şöyle bir göz attım.

So I sat at my desk and took a quick glance at the old photos.

Two idioms working together. Göz atmak (“to cast an eye / glance”) takes its target in the dative — fotoğraflara (“at the photos”), not the accusative. This is a transfer trap: English “look at” makes learners reach for the bare object, but the case is fixed by the idiom. The little şöyle bir before it (“just / sort of”) is a colloquial softener meaning “give it a casual once-over”. And the converb oturup (“having sat down, and...”) chains the sitting to the glancing in one breath — that -ip converb is covered in non-finite/converbs-overview.

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The case an idiom assigns to its object is part of the idiom and must be memorized with it. Göz atmak takes the dative (-e/-a): resme göz atmak, “to glance at the picture”. Substituting the accusative (resmi göz atmak) is wrong, even though English “look at the picture” feels like a direct object.

Paragraph 2: a tense family dinner

Akşam yemeğinde küçük kardeşim yine babama kafa tuttu.

At dinner my little brother stood up to my father again.

Kafa tutmak (“to hold a head”, i.e. to defy, to stand up to someone) assigns the dative to the person defied: babama (“to my father”). The idiom here is in the simple past (tuttu) with the adverb yine (“again”) slotted in front — exactly where an ordinary verb's adverb would go. Idioms obey normal word order; nothing about being an idiom freezes their position.

Babam önce hiç oralı olmadı, sonra birden parladı.

At first my father paid it no mind at all, then he suddenly flared up.

Two idioms back to back. Oralı olmak (literally “to be over-there-ish”) means “to take notice / show concern”; negated as oralı olmadı it means “didn't react, ignored it” — and hiç (“at all”) reinforces the negation, a negative-concord pattern. Then parlamak literally “to shine/gleam” is used idiomatically for “to flare up in anger”. The same verb, parlamak, can be perfectly literal elsewhere (“the metal shone”); context tells you which reading you are in.

Annem araya girdi de ortalık biraz yatıştı.

My mother stepped in, and so things calmed down a bit.

Araya girmek (“to enter into the middle / between”) = “to intervene, to mediate”. The connective de here means “and so / and thereby”, linking cause to result. The second clause uses ortalık (“the surroundings, the general scene”) — a near-untranslatable word for the ambient atmosphere of a place — as the subject of yatışmak (“to settle, to calm down”).

Paragraph 3: a job that fell through

O işe çok güveniyordum ama son anda her şey suya düştü.

I was really counting on that job, but at the last moment everything fell through.

Suya düşmek (“to fall into water”) means “to fall through, to come to nothing” — said of plans and hopes. It is in the past here (düştü) with the inanimate subject her şey (“everything”). English “fall through” is almost a mirror image, which makes this one easy to remember; not all idioms are so kind. Note güvenmek (“to trust/rely on”) in the imperfect güveniyordum takes the dative too (o işe, “on that job”).

Patronum durumu öğrenince küplere bindi.

When my boss found out the situation, he hit the roof.

Küplere binmek (literally “to ride onto the jars/vats”) = “to become furious”. Here the idiom follows a converb of time, öğrenince (“upon learning, when he learned”), which compresses an entire “when...” clause into one word — see non-finite/converbs-overview. The plural-dative küplere is frozen; you never say it in the singular. This is typical of idioms: the noun is locked, but the verb (bindi, past tense) inflects.

Ben de sinirden tepem attı, çantamı alıp çıktım.

I lost my temper out of anger too, grabbed my bag and walked out.

Tepesi atmak (“one's crown/top flies off”) = “to lose one's temper”. Crucially the possessive on tepe agrees with the angry person: tepem attı (“my top flew off” = I lost it). To report it about someone else you would say tepesi attı. The ablative sinirden (“out of anger”) gives the cause, and the converb chain alıp çıktım (“having grabbed... I left”) strings the actions together.

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In “possessor idioms” like tepesi atmak, canı sıkılmak, and keyfi yerinde olmak, the possessive suffix is not decorative — it marks whose temper, boredom, or mood it is, and it changes with the person: tepem (mine), tepen (yours), tepesi (his/hers). Get this agreement wrong and you accidentally say someone else lost their temper.

How idioms fit the sentence: a summary

Across these paragraphs, three grammatical facts about deyimler stand out, and all three are places English transfer leads learners astray:

The verb conjugates fully. attım, attı, atacak, atmış — tense, person, evidentiality, all available. The idiom is not frozen at the verb.
The object case is fixed by the idiom, not by intuition: göz atmak
- dative, kafa tutmak
  - dative, suya düşmek (the “water” is built in). These pair like the verb-noun collocations in collocations/verb-noun.
The possessor noun agrees in person. canım, canın, canı sıkıldı — the boredom belongs to someone, and that someone is marked.

Common mistakes

❌ Resmi göz attım.

Incorrect — used the accusative; göz atmak governs the dative.

✅ Resme göz attım.

I glanced at the picture.

❌ Sıkıldım canım.

Word-salad — the possessor noun must be the subject of sıkılmak, not an afterthought.

✅ Canım sıkıldı.

I got bored.

❌ Babama kafa tuttum onu.

Incorrect — double-marks the object; the dative “babama” already is the object of kafa tutmak.

✅ Babama kafa tuttum.

I stood up to my father.

❌ Tepesi attım.

Incorrect — the possessive must agree with me, the angry one: tepem, not tepesi.

✅ Tepem attı.

I lost my temper.

Key takeaways

The paragraphs on this page are original, written for this guide — they are not quotations from any source.
Idioms (deyimler) are living grammar: the core verb conjugates for tense, person, and mood like any verb.
Each idiom assigns a fixed case to its object (often the dative: göz atmak, kafa tutmak) — memorize the case with the idiom.
“Possessor idioms” (canı sıkılmak, tepesi atmak, keyfi kaçmak) mark whose feeling it is with an agreeing possessive suffix.
Idioms keep normal Turkish word order; adverbs (yine, birden) and converb chains (oturup, alıp) attach to them exactly as to plain verbs.

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