A phraseme, also called a set phrase, fixed expression, multiword expression (in computational linguistics), or idiom,[1][2][3][citation needed] is a multi-word or multi-morphemic utterance whose components include at least one that is selectionally constrained[clarification needed] or restricted by linguistic convention such that it is not freely chosen.
At the other extreme, there are collocations such as stark naked, hearty laugh, or infinite patience where one of the words is chosen freely (naked, laugh, and patience, respectively) based on the meaning the speaker wishes to express while the choice of the other (intensifying) word (stark, hearty, infinite) is constrained by the conventions of the English language (hence, *hearty naked, *infinite laugh, *stark patience).
Both kinds of expression are phrasemes, and can be contrasted with ’’free phrases’’, expressions where all of the members (barring grammatical elements whose choice is forced by the morphosyntax of the language) are chosen freely, based exclusively on their meaning and the message that the speaker wishes to communicate.
A collocation is generally said to consist of a base (shown in Small caps), a lexical unit chosen freely by the speaker, and of a collocate, a lexical unit chosen as a function of the base.
For the same thing, French says prendre [= ‘take’] une décision, German—eine Entscheidung treffen/fällen [= ‘meet/fell’], Russian—prinjat´ [= ‘accept’] rešenie, Turkish—karar vermek [= ‘give’], Polish—podjąć [= ‘take up’] decyzję, Serbian—doneti [= ‘bring’] odluku, Korean—gyeoljeongeul hada 〈naerida〉 [= ‘do 〈take/put down〉’], and Swedish—fatta [= ‘grab’].
Generally, a cliché is said to be a phraseme consisting of components of which none are selected freely and whose usage restrictions are imposed by conventional linguistic usage, as in the following examples: Clichés are compositional in the sense that their meaning is more or less the sum of the meanings of their parts (not, for example, in no matter what), and clichés (unlike idioms) would be completely intelligible to someone hearing them for the first time without having learned the expression beforehand.
‘What is your name?’) and Soy [N] (‘I am [N]’), and while they are fully understandable and grammatical they are not standard; equally, the literal translations of the Spanish expressions would sound odd in English, as the question ‘How are you called?’ sounds unnatural to English speakers.
Morphological phrasemes are conventionalized combinations of morphemes such that at least one of their components is selectionally restricted.
[16] Good examples are English compounds such as harvestman ‘arachnid belonging to the order Opiliones’ (≠ ‘harvest’ ⊕ ‘man’) and bookworm (≠ ‘book’ ⊕ ‘worm’); derivational idioms can also be found: airliner ‘large vehicle for flying passengers by air’ (≠ airline ‘company that transports people by air’ ⊕ -er ‘person or thing that performs an action’).
), and the inhabitant suffixes required for particular place names (Winnipeger, *Winnipegian; Calgarian, *Calgarier; etc.