In a sentence idioms acts as which parts of speech??
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Check the suggested links in the comments for an explanation of "phrase." I think the explanation of "idiom" could use a little expansion, which I hope will let you understand that idiomatic usage affects many parts of the language.
The word comes directly from the Greek means "something peculiar to," and for language, the word applies in two ways. The first is a phrase, a group of words that means something together that cannot be derived from parsing the words individually. You'll find the canonical example "It's raining cats and dogs." This means that it's raining hard, but there's no way to figure that out by learning what the words "rain," "cat," and "dog" mean. And it turns out that this way of describing a downpour is peculiar to English. Translate it directly into other languages, and native speakers of those languages will look at you with incomprehension. Some languages have their own idioms. In Dutch, it rains pipe stems; in Greek, chair legs; in French and Polish, frogs; in Norwegian, trolls. 1
We also use the word "idiom" or ("idiomatic") to describe peculiar grammatical constructs or associations of words in a language. For instance, it's idiomatic to say one is married to one's spouse. You can't figure out a priori that we say "married to" instead of "married with." You have to memorize that. In Spanish it's "casado con," literally "married with," just like it's "con gusto," meaning "with pleasure." We agree with Spaniards about the preposition with the word "pleasure," but not about the word "married." That's just a peculiarity of English.
So-called "phrasal verbs" in English are another example. The sentence "Look after your little brother" means to take care of the little brat. But you can't figure that out from the separate words "look" (meaning watch) and "after" (meaning beyond or later). You have to do more than look beyond your little brother; you have to idiomatically care for him because the two words "look after" form an idiomatic unit.
The choice of grammatical constructs can also be idiomatic. For instance, infinitives and gerunds are both verbal constructs that can be used as nouns. In some instance you may use either interchangeably; in other instances, only one is correct; and in still others, the two uses mean different things. For instance, "He stopped smoking" (gerund) means he doesn't smoke any more. "He stopped to smoke" (infinitive) means he does because he just stopped so that he could smoke. Again, knowing the meanings and inflections of the words "stop" and "smoke" won't tell you which is which. It's idiomatic.
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