Perhaps an example of Esperanto humour today… I came across this word: “Idiotismo”. It means “Idiom”. An idiom is a word or group of words whose meaning is based only on usage. In other words, just by looking at the words you can’t tell what they mean, in fact, often they’ll seem to mean something completely different!
For example “She kicked the bucket”. “To kick the bucket” is an idiom, it means “to die”. A non-native speaker only beginning to learn English may wonder what on earth you’re talking about!
Esperanto has very few idioms. As a language, it makes quite a lot of sense!
So the funny thing is that “Idioto” means “Idiot” and “Ismo” means “doctrine/-ism”. So in the eyes of Esperanto, an idiom (“Idiotismo”) is made up of those words! It’s the same as “Idiot doctrine” or an “Idiotism”! 
Amusing.
October 12, 2011 at 15:01
The same happens in Spanish.
October 12, 2011 at 15:12
I see! Know if many languages do too? I wonder if it’s a thing just copied by Esperanto because many languages do similar, or whether it was a conscious addition (probably influenced by at least Spanish or similar) knowing that according to the word building you’d get idiot doctrine.
September 30, 2011 at 13:01
Speaking of idioms for death, coincidently, I was putting together a Finnish > English dictionary application and while testing it, came across this…
kuolla >> die ; decease ; perish ; go ; exit ; pass away ; expire ; pass ; kick the bucket ; cash in one’s chips ; buy the farm ; conk ; give-up the ghost ; drop dead ; pop off ; choke ; croak ; snuff it
*facepalm*
Source site: http://www.dicts.info/
September 30, 2011 at 14:31
Haha! Oh dear!
Good luck with the dictionary app!