Turning over a new leaf, making both ends meet, breaking the ice, shooting wide of the mark, smelling a rat and having other fish to fry – modern day expressions you might think?

Think again…

This handful of examples is taken from a collection of idioms, dating back to the 17^th Century, that are commonly used today and highlighted in ‘A Frequency Dictionary of Multi-Word Expressions in British English’, authored by Professor of Corpus Linguistics Vaclav Brezina and Senior Lecturer Dr Dana Gablasova, both from Lancaster University and published by Routledge.

Of the proverbs recorded by English naturalist John Ray in the 17th century, 113 recorded in the new dictionary remain in use today, demonstrating the enduring nature of what are known as multi-word expressions (MWEs) or set phrases, highlighting the continuity in English phraseology.

Unlike traditional frequency dictionaries, this book does not focus on single words but on MWEs in contemporary British English.

Its pages are devoted to idioms (set phrases often with non-literal meanings), phrasal verbs (verbs used withprepositions or adverbs that create a new meaning), collocations (words that naturally go together), academic and speech formulas, similes (comparisons using ‘like’ or ‘as’), complex linking phrases, light verb constructions (phrases using verbs such as ‘make’ or ‘take’ where the verb adds little meaning such as ‘make a decision’), co-ordinated structures (phrases connected with ‘and’ or ‘or’) and complex nominals (descriptive noun phrases).

The dictionary takes a frequency-based, category-driven approach, and features visualisations such as graphs, ‘sparklines’ and an alphabetical line-up, offering insights into language use and British cultural habits (for example time related expressions: ‘time will tell’, ‘make time’, ‘see the light of day’).

The data is drawn from the British National Corpus 2014 (BNC2014), a 100-million-word resource developed at Lancaster University. The corpus represents a diverse range of spoken and written English genres/registers, including informal conversation, fiction, newspapers, academic prose and e-language.

Using #LancsBox, specialised software created at Lancaster University, the researchers trawled and analysed large collections of real-world examples of language (both written and spoken) from the BNC2014 to identify patterns, impossible to spot by hand, in how words are used.

MWEs play a crucial role in fluent and natural language use and the new dictionary provides essential information on the frequency and distribution of phrases and expressions people use - the basic building blocks of language - to understand how we learn language and communicate.

Research shows that a significant portion of English communication relies on fixed and semi-fixed phrases, rather than individual words used in isolation.

The dictionary includes 5,000 English MWEs organised in 10 categories. The MWEs are fixed or semi-fixed word combinations that occur in a range of approximately 500 to 0.1 times per million words, so with at least 10 instances in the dataset.

“The frequency-based approach ensures that the MWEs included are highly relevant for both informal and professional communication, making this a useful resource for language learners and professionals alike,” says Professor Brezina.

“By focusing on MWEs, rather than single words, this dictionary provides a more accurate reflection of real-world language use and helps learners build natural, idiomatic fluency.”

This dictionary is designed for students, educators, researchers, journalists, language material developers and anyone interested in phraseology and vocabulary acquisition in British English.

It provides a structured and accessible way to explore how MWEs function in real-world usage.

Four key findings:

• Overall, the most frequent type of MWEs are multi-word linking expressions, while similes are the least frequent.
• MWEs relating to the human body are especially prominent, often used metaphorically, with ‘hand’, ‘eye’, ‘head’ and ‘heart’ among the most frequent.
• Most frequent collocations include expressions such as ‘long time’, ‘spend time’ and ‘recent years’ illustrating the prominence of expressions of time in everyday language.
• Multi-word linking expressions like ‘such as’ appear most in academic writing, ‘out of’ is common in fiction, and ‘that's why’ dominates informal speech.

Additionally, the dictionary features 20 thematic boxes highlighting MWEs within specific domains such as health and the body, expressions of time, colour terms, food and drink, punctuations and mind and emotions.

The category relating to body parts – often used metaphorically – or to health and wellbeing more generally shows the most frequently referenced in MWEs are: hand (for example ‘on the other hand’, ‘on the one hand’ and ‘hand over’ ), eye (‘close eyes’, ‘open eyes’ and ‘roll eyes’), head (‘turn head’, ‘head off’ and ‘head out’) and heart (‘at the heart of’, ‘heart attack’ and ‘heart rate’).

The top colour terms include ‘Red Bull’, ‘black and/or white’, ‘red carpet’, ‘White House’ and ‘red wine’. When it comes to colour idioms, the top line-up includes: ‘out of the blue’, ‘a red flag’, ‘the green light’, ‘a grey/ gray area’ and ‘a red herring’.

And in the food-themed box ‘ice cream’ comes in at number one, with ‘olive oil’ taking second place. Further down the list are: ‘have a cup of tea’, ‘go for a drink’ and ‘take something with a pinch of salt’.

When it comes to punctuation, the three-dot ellipsis (…) is the most frequent combination, followed by double exclamation marks (!!) for emphasis. The sequence ?! occurs seven times more often than !?.

And in the section on traditional similes ‘(as) good as new’ tops the bill followed by ‘(as) hard as nails’ and ‘(as) clear as day’.

• All the information is also freely accessible through the Lancaster University LancsLex website.