phraseme

plural phrasemes

1. human sciencesAn utterance, consisting of multiple words or morphemes, at least one of whose components is selectionally constrained or restricted by linguistic convention such that it is not freely chosen; a lexicalized multi-word expression.

   Phrasemes are multiword expression which are units of the lexicon.

   2008, Harald Burger, editor, Phraseologie / Phraseology, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 110

   1 more example

   A phraseme is a linguistic entity, consisting of at least two items, the meaning of which is characterised by semantic irregularity, that is to say, the meaning of a phraseme is not arrived at by the composition of the meanings of its lexical constituents, but it is understood as semantically independent of these.

   2000, Elżbieta Mańczak-Wohlfeld, editor, Tradition and Postmodernity: English and American Studies and the Challenge of the Future […] , →ISBN, page 78

   Synonyms: set phrase