“At large” can refer to escaped prisoners or missing employees, as well as a general connecting term. It can convey positive or negative sentiments and has various interpretations, such as a body of work or a broad view. Idioms’ meanings change with context, and translating them is complex due to different language understandings.
“At large” is an idiom in the English language that has two basic meanings. The most common interpretation of the phrase in everyday speech is a reference to someone who is supposed to be in confinement, usually in a prison, but has somehow escaped and could be anywhere. In this context, it could also refer to prisoners who were prisoners of war, political prisoners, or others who escaped from their captors.
In a more benign sense, it can refer to employees who are missing from their workplace position and are somewhere else on the premises. The other frequent use is as a general connecting term, often in political arenas. It can mean an entire body of individuals, such as “country at large.”
English sayings like this often have a tendency to convey positive or negative sentiments. Even if the meaning of the idioms is technically neutral, in this case it is assumed that the escaped prisoners are dangerous individuals. In the same context, it can also refer to a dangerous animal that has escaped capture, such as a lion or tiger that has escaped from its enclosure at the zoo. When a public announcement from a person or animal is listed as “in the wild,” people immediately assume that the previous moderation status was for a very good reason. Outlaws on the western frontier of the United States during the settlement period were often referred to in this way, with notorious train robber Jesse James who ran from the authorities for 16 years as a prime example.
Idiomatic expressions can have many interpretations, and there is even a more contemporary one for this phrase. It can simply mean a body of work in general, such as a teacher deciding to lecture on “a subject in general”. The saying can also be used to represent a broad view of a field of interest.
Since the meaning of idioms changes according to the context in which they are used, it is often important not to take them at face value without first thinking about what was said when they were expressed. The problem of translating idioms from one language to another and maintaining their original meaning is a complex one. This is because each language has a different way of understanding how the world around it works.
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