Is 'set phrase' a set phrase?

Some words or phrases have 'special' meaning beyond the combination of constituent parts.

For example:

• 'White House' is the white house where the US president lives.
• 'black board' is where you draw on with chalk at school [actually more recently a green board and in the past 20 years a 'white board' (which is white)].

Negative examples (phrases or constructions that are not examples of the concept):

• 'quasi-' anything: (I find) is -not- a 'special thing' for me, it is not a new word with a meaning all its own, 'quasi' is just a productive modifier that doesn't mean anything more than itself and the new word it makes can be judged simply as 'almost like an X'
• colors usually (with some example exceptions above) don't make anything 'new' - a 'red door' is just a door colored red. If it took on some cultural connection, then it might need an additional dictionary specification for that term 'red door'.

I'm not talking about the figurative (non-literal, metaphorical) uses of such terms, but certainly metaphor ("White House' as the seat of American government), and idiom ('raining cats and dogs') are examples of the idea 'a set phrase'. When a neologism or coinage becomes an accepted item.

For example, if you look at a list of words that begin with the prefix 'quasi-', almost entirely, these words are not special or used ever again, or if they're used again it is simply out of logical need of the construction. They don't describe a recognizably repeatable 'thing'.

What I'm looking for is the appropriate way to designate a locution that is more than the sum of its parts.

I've been using the bland term 'set phrase' to call this phenomenon. It itself is not particularly evocative of the 'noncompositional' aspect of some phrases.

Is set phrase the best way to name this phenomenon? or is there another?

Solution 1:

A set phrase, a fixed expression, an idiomatic expression: all these would seem excellent terms to describe what you mean. They all imply that the phrase means more than the sum of its parts, as one would ordinarily expect, and is often found in this exact form. These terms serve their purpose quite well; I doubt whether anything better exists.

Solution 2:

Another common term is "idiom", though it has several interrelated meanings. Linguists and lexicographers have some more specific terms too, including "lexical item" and "listeme".

Thinking about it now (and I've thought about it several times before) I might describe a set phrase as "something between an idiom and a collocation":

• An idiom having set parts with a meaning not related to those parts: red herring = false clue, kick the bucket = die.
• A collocation being a group of words with a high statistical rate of occurring together, but not necessarily having any special meaning: "knife and fork", "cross the road".

A set phrase might have a literal "sum of parts" meaning or an unrelated meaning, but unlike a collocation, a set phrase always refers to a certain specific concept though it doesn't have to be as fixed as an idiom.

For your particular examples, I would say that set phrase is often a good term for those which consist of multiple words, but for those you listed which are single words, one of the other terms suggested would be better.

It's worth noting that the Wikipedia entry for "set phrase" has been struggling for years, suggesting it's not a fully accepted term or not a well defined concept.

The current entry on Wiktionary does seem to be doing well though, and looks pretty sensible to me.

To answer the title of your wording, "I would say yes set phrase is a set phrase, but it might not be universally accepted as one."

Disclaimer: I believe I created the initial Wikipedia entry some years ago, and I've almost certainly contributed to the Wiktionary entry over the years as well.