METAPHOR AND SYMBOLIC ACTIVITY 9(4), 247-270

Copyright O 1994, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Descriptive Norms for 171 Idiomatic

Expressions: Familiarity,
Compositionality, Predictability, and
Literality
Debra A. Titone and Cynthia M. Connine
State University of New York at Binghamton

Descriptive norms for 171 idiomatic expressions rated by 226 subjects on the
dimensions of familiarity, compositionality, predictability, and literality are
reported. Different theoretical positions concerning the comprehension of idi-
oms are discussed, and the relevance of each dimension to idiom processing is
described. The dimension of predictability correlated significantly with alterna-
tive ratings of familiarity. Literality negatively correlated with abnormal
decomposability. Inconsistencies between the compositionality ratings ob-
tained in the present study and prior studies (e.g., Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting,
1989) are noted.

The comprehension of idiomatic expressions has been the focus of much

recent work in psycholinguistics. Idioms have been traditionally defined as
noncompositional-that is, a phrase whose figurative meaning cannot be
derived from a literal analysis of the component words (Swinney & Cutler,
1979). As a consequence, the comprehension of these expressions are not
adequately explained by standard models of language comprehension. Sev-
eral specific idiom-processing models have been proposed (e.g., Bobrow &
Bell, 1973; Cacciari & Tabossi, 1988; Gibbs, 1980; Swinney & Cutler, 1979).
Generally, these models either assume that all idioms comprise a homogene-
ous class or that they may vary along a number of linguistic dimensions.
Although much of the research that has examined the comprehension of
idioms has largely ignored preexisting differences among idioms, the studies
that have taken their heterogeneous nature into consideration have not done
so in a coordinated fashion controlling for more than one dimension at a

Requests for reprints should be sent to Debra A. Titone, Psychology Department, State
University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000.
248 TITONE AND CONNINE

time. This has made comparisons of empirical results and theoretical concep-
tualizations of idiom comprehension difficult.
The purpose of the present study is to report descriptive norms of four
dimensions along which idioms may vary, in the hope that future research
will employ a more standardized means of examining idiom processing.
These dimensions are familiarity, compositionality, predictability, and liter-
ality. The rationale for choosing these four aspects of idioms is that each of
these dimensions has been shown to influwee eitbr idiom processing in
particular or language processing in general. In the following text, our three
major goals are (a) to provide a brief discussion of the theoretical positions
concerning idiom comprehension, (b) to describe the relevance of each of the
four dimensions to the body of research on idiom processing, and (c) to
present descriptive norms for the four target dimensions.

MODELS OF IDIOM COMPREHENSION

One class of idiom-comprehension models assumes that the defining feature

of idiomatic expressions is that they are noncompositional. This class of
models includes the Literal Processing model (Bobrow & Bell, 1973), the
Lexical Representation model (Swinney & Cutler, 1979), and the Direct
Access model (Gibbs, 1980, 1986). According to the Literal Processing
model, a special list of idiomatic expressionsexists in memory and is accessed
through a special mode of processing. The comprehension device first con-
structs a literal interpretation of the string. If this process fails, an idiom
mode is instantiated and the idiomatic meaning recovered from the idiom list.
This model was supported by Bobrow and Bell (1973), who found a de-
creased probability of subjects initially reporting an idiom interpretation for
an idiom that was preceded by a series of literal phrases. According to this
model, the probability of accessing an idiomatic interpretation was reduced,
because presentation of a large number of literal phrases promoted a literal-
processing mode that circumvented instantiation of the idiom mode.
The Literal Processing model can be contrasted with the Lexical Represen-
tation model (Swinney & Cutler, 1979) in terms of the representational
structure of idioms and the temporal sequencing of idiomatic and literal
activation. According to the Lexical Representation model, idiomatic expres-
sions are stored and retrieved from the lexicon similar to lengthy words.
Swinney and Cutler criticized Bobrow and Bell (1973) for drawing conclu-
sions about the online comprehension of idiams but not empbying an online
task. Contrary to the Literal Processing model, Swinney and Cutler predicted
that the idiom meaning would be accessed sooner than computation of a
literal interpretation, because they assumed that access is faster than compu-
tation. Their prediction was supported using a visual phrase-classifkation
 IDIOM NORMS 249

task. Latencies for deciding whether a word string is a valid English phrase
were shorter for idiomatic expressions compared to literal control expres-
sions (see also Glass, 1983, and Estill & Kemper, 1982, for compatible
results).
Although the Literal Processing model and Lexical Representation model
differ in terms of how and when activation of the idiom meaning takes place,
they are similar in that computation of the literal meaning is not precluded.
This aspect of the models contrasts with the Direct Access model (Gibbs,
1980, 1986), which assumes that only an idiomatic meaning of the phrase is
available during comprehension. In one set of experiments, a visual para-
phrase-judgment task was used in which subjects decided whether the para-
phrase of a sentence containing an idiom used either figuratively or literally
was true. Decision times for paraphrase judgments following idioms used
idiomatically were shorter than those for idioms used literally (Gibbs, 1980,
1986; see also Ortony, Schallert, Reynolds, & Antos, 1978, for similar re-
sults). The Direct Access model accounts for these results because it attrib-
utes priority to the idiomatic meaning, such that decisions regarding this
meaning take less time than decisions regarding the literal meaning.
The results supporting the Direct Access model prompted a series of
experiments by Cacciari and Tabossi (1988) that used cross-modal priming
to assess the relative activation of idiomatic and literal meaning during idiom
comprehension. Cacciari and Tabossi argued that the cross-modal priming
methodology is a more sensitive online measure of meaning activation and
can more accurately measure activation of an idiom's literal and figurative
interpretations as compared to sentence-reading time, paraphrase judgments,
and phrase-classification tasks. In Experiment 1, Cacciari and Tabossi found
that responses to idiom-related targets showed facilitation, whereas literal-
related targets did not. This result suggests that only the idiom meaning was
activated. Although this pattern of data is consistent with the Direct Access
model (Gibbs, 1980, 1986), a post hoc inspection of the idioms Cacciari and
Tabossi used revealed that the last word of the idiom for the majority of
idioms was highly predictable. Cacciari and Tabossi hypothesized that pre-
dictability of the idiom-final word may have produced the dominant activa-
tion of the idiomatic interpretation. To test this hypothesis, a second
cross-modal priming experiment was conducted that used unpredictable idi-
oms, and only the literal meaning showed priming. A third experiment
showed that the idiomatic meaning of unpredictable idioms did not become
available until 300 msec after the acoustic offset of the idiom.
To account for their results, Cacciari and Tabossi (1988) proposed an
account of idiom representation in which the idiom meaning is a distributed
representation rather than a lexical entry. According to this view, termed the
ConJigurationhypothesis by Cacciari and Glucksberg (1991), activation of the
idiom meaning takes place only after a sufficient portion of the string is
250 TITONE AND CONNINE

encountered, and what determines sdBciency varies depending on the idiom.

Cacciari and Tabossi used the term idiomtic key to refer to the point at
which the idiomatic configuration emerges.
To summarize, there are four major idiom-processing theories that have
been proposed in the languagaprooessing literature. However, rigorous as-
sessment of their relative merit is hampered because diEment experiments
have used idioms that differed along potentially important dimensions, and
tasks used to investigate idiom comprehension have tapped into the idiom-
comprehension process at dierent points and by varying means. This study
represents an attempt to address the first issue. In the next section, we discuss
four dimensions along which idioms may vary and their potential relevance
to idiom processing. The four dimen~ionswe focus on are familiarity, compo-
sitionality, predictability, and literality.

FAMILIARITY

Familiarity has been defined as the frequency with which a listener or reader
encounters a word in its written or spoken form (Gem-her, 1984) and the
degree to which the meaning of a word is weH known or easily understood
(Nusbaum, Pisoni, & Davis, 1984). Familiarity has been shown to be an
important influence on word recognition (Connine, Mullbx, Shemoff, &
Yelen, 1990; Gernsbacher, 1984). Familiarity also plays a role in the compre-
hension of novel metaphors (Blasko & Connine, 1993). As is the case for
words and metaphors, familiarity has been shown to influence the compre-
hension of idioms. Sehweigert (1986), for example, conducted a post hoc
analysis of the familiarity of a set of idiom used by Glass (1983). Using a
phrase-classification task, Glass controlled for the familiarity of literal con-
trol phrases whose processing was compared to a group of idioms. Processing
time for idioms and their literal counterparts did not diger when the controls
were highly familiar. The generalizability of this result was challenged by
Schweigert's post hoc analysis because the idioms in Glass's study were rated
as low familiar by Schwei~ert'ssubjects. It is possible that highly familiar
idioms would have been more easily processed than f d l i a r literal control
phrases.
The relation between familiarity and idiom comprehension was systemati-
cally explored in a study by Schweigert (1986; see also Schweigert & Moates,
1988) Reading times for sentences containing highly famitiar idioms were
shorter than those for sentences containing less familiar idioms. This result
was discussed in terms of how models of idiom comprehension would need
to be modified in order to account for the effect of familiarity. Cronk and
Schweigert (1992) also found that highly familiar idioms were read more
quickly than less familiar idioms and that idiom familiarity interacted with
 IDIOM NORMS 251

familiarity of the idiom's literal meaning. These studies highlight the impor-
tance of controlling for familiarity when examining the comprehension of
idioms.

In contrast to the traditional noncompositional definition of idioms, Nun-

berg (1978) proposed that idioms may vary with respect to compositional-
ity-that is, the way in which the literal meanings of their word constituents
contribute (or do not contribute) to the overall idiomatic interpretation of
the phrase (see also, Gibbs, 1992; Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989). Three
categories of compositionality have been posited that reflect this difference in
an idiom's semantic analyzability (Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak,
Bolton, & Keppel, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989; Nunberg, 1978).
Normally decomposable idioms are expressions in which a part of the idiom
is used literally. For example, "pop the question "contains a noun phrase, "the
question," that refers to a marriage proposal when 'pop" is the verb that
modifies it. Abnormally decomposable idioms are expressions where the
referents of an idiom's parts can be identified metaphorically, for example,
"meet your maker. " Because "maker" metaphorically refers to the Western
conception of God, it is possible to compute the idiom meaning through
knowledge of conventional metaphors. Finally, semantically nondecomposa-
ble idioms fit the traditional definition because the idiom meaning cannot be
compositionally derived from the words that comprise the string (unless
extended knowledge of the idiom's etymology, or sufficient contextual con-
straint, is available). An example of a semantically nondecomposable idiom
is "chew the fat. "
Research by Gibbs and colleagues (Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak,
Bolton, & Keppel, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989) demonstrated that
subjects are capable of classifying idioms into these three categories. Further-
more, Gibbs, Nayak, and Cutting found that people read sentences contain-
ing normally and abnormally decomposable idioms faster than those that
contain semantically nondecomposable idioms. Because decomposable idi-
oms are presumed to be processed more like literal language, their quicker
reading times suggest that a compositional analysis of idioms is initially
attempted. Note that the influence of compositionality is consistent with the
Configuration hypothesis (Cacciari & Glucksberg, 1991; Cacciari & Tabossi,
1988), which claims that activation of word meanings takes place while the
configuration is perceived or recognized as a phrasal unit. Similarly, the
results of Gibbs, Nayak, and Cutting's study suggest that the literal meanings
of words facilitate comprehension of an idiom if they are related to the
overall meaning of the phrase. In addition to playing a role in comprehen-
252 TITONE AND CONNINE

sion, activation of word meanings may also influence the syntactic and
semantic flexibility of idioms. For example, subjects rated semantically non-
decomposable idioms as less lexically flexible (Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, &
Keppel, 1989) and less syntactically flexible (Gibbs & O'Brien, 1989) than
either normally or abnormally decomposable idioms. Finally, word mean-
ings may also play a role in the semantic productivity of idioms (i.e., using
old idioms in novel ways; Cacciari & Glucksberg, 1991).

PREDICTABILITY

Predictability is a property of phrases or sentences that can potentially M u -

ence lexical access. Predictability has been used to invest&&e the i n f l u m of
sentence context on lexical access (Erlich d'c Raper, 1981; Rayner & Pollat-
sek, 1989; Zola, 1984). Generally, proc;es$ing of hi@y predictable words is
facilitated relative to less predictable words.
As applied to idioms, predictability is defined as the probability of com-
pleting an incomplete phrase idiomatically. Thus, Cacciari and Tabossi
(1988) demonstrated that predictability influences the time course of idi-
omatic and literal meaning activation during idiom comprehension. They
found that the idiom meaning of high predictable idioms (i.e., phrases in
which the last word of the phrase was expeotgrd given exposure to the initial
portion of the phrase) was recovered sooner than that of low predictable
idioms (i.e., phrases in which the last word was not expected). Furthermore,
the literal meaning of the last word was activated for low predictable idioms,
but not for high predictable idioms. This suggested that the idiom meaning
was more quickly rceovmed and the literal miming more quickly rejected for
the high predictable idioms than the low predictable idioms. A similar pat-
tern of results was found by Titone and Connine (1994) using cross-modal
priming. Within the framework of the Comiiguration hypothis (Cacciari &
Glucksberg, 1991; Cacciari & Tabossi, 1988), difkrences in idiom predict-
ability are attributable to differences in the strength of the connections be-
tween individual words of the idiom.

LITERALITY

Literality refers to an idiom's potential for a literal interpretation. For exam-

ple, some idioms such as "kick the bucket" have a well-formed literal mean-
ing, whereas other idioms such as "stew in one's own juices" only have a
meaningful idiomatic interpretation (assuming an unbiased context). The
research that has directly examined the role of litaality in idiom comprehen-
sion, however, has been inconsistent with respect to effects of literality.
 IDIOM NORMS 253

Brannon (cited in Popiel & McRae, 1988) found that sentence classifica-
tion times were longer when a sentence contained an idiom that had a
possible literal interpretation as compared to sentences that contained an
idiom with no possible literal interpretation. In contrast, he found no differ-
ence in response times between literal and nonliteral idioms in a phrase-
classification task. Mueller and Gibbs (1987, Experiment 2) reported the
opposite pattern of results. Specifically, they found that subjects took longer
to read and make paraphrase judgments about idioms that did not have a
literal meaning as compared to idioms that did.
One possible explanation for these contradictory results is that the alterna-
tive meanings may not be comparable for all literally interpretable idioms. If
an idiom has a highly plausible literal interpretation, competition between
this possible interpretation and the idiom meaning may result in longer
processing times. On the other hand, if an idiom has a literal interpretation
that is not very salient or plausible, there would not be as much ensuing
competition between the alternative senses of the phrase, and the idiom
meaning may be processed more quickly. In support of this idea, Titone and
Connine (1993), using a cross-modal priming task, found that activation of
the figurative and literal meaning of idioms depended on the phrases' literal-
ity. High predictable, literally plausible idioms showed less activation of the
idiom meaning and more activation of the literal meaning of the last word of
the idiom at the acoustic offset, compared to high predictable phrases that
did not have a plausible literal interpretation. For example, idiomatic activa-
tion for "had cold feet" was present at the offset of "cold." At idiom offset,
idiomatic activation decreased, and the literal meaning of the last word of the
idiom was activated (e.g., 'yeet'7. However, literally plausible idioms (e.g.,
"burn the midnight oil") showed comparable idiomatic priming in both posi-
tions and no literal activation.
Popiel and McRae (1988) also examined the relation between the literal
and figurative usage of some common idioms by asking subjects to rate the
idiomatic and literal meanings of these expressions for familiarity. One of
their findings was that the idioms differed more in their literal ratings than
in their figurative ratings (Popiel & McRae, 1988). This observed indepen-
dence between the figurative and literal senses of idioms enabled Popiel and
McRae to conclude that idioms are not a homogeneous class with respect to
the difference in familiarity between their idiomatic and literal senses.

THE PRESENTSTUDY

Familiarity, compositionality, predictability, and literality have been shown

to significantly influence idiom processing. The purpose of this study is to
report norms for a group of 171 idioms on these four dimensions. In addi-
254 TITONE AND CONNINE

tion, the relations between the various dimensions are explored. We are
particularly interested in the factors that correlate with the dimension of
predictability. There are a number of lindstic component8 that could potsn-
tially constrain the completion of a phrase fragment. For example, Colombo
(1992) pointed out that predictability may have several components that
include the frequency of the idiom.
Compositionality may also idiuence idiom predictability. Semantidy
nondecomposable idiom derive their idiomatic meaaing from the phrase
as a unit rather than the individual word m k g s that comprise the
string. Given a nondecomposable structure, the idiom phrasal unit may be
more crucial for recovery of the idiomatic waning than for d~cy)mposhlble
idioms. Stated somewhat Wermtly, nondsoaposabb idioms may be rep-
resented more like a phrasal unit than semantically dtxomposable idioms.
This emphasis on the phrase as a unit may result in a greater degree of
constraint for semantically nondecomposabk idioms relative to dccompos-
able idioms. Finally, literality may be linked to idiom predictability. It is
possible that high predictable idioms are phrases whose literal meaning is
neither familiar nor plausible. A lack of coherence early on in the con-
struction of a possible literal interpretation of a hi& p d c t a b l e idiom
may result in early suppression of the literal interpretation. One conse-
quence of this is that the idiomatic interpretrttion of high predictable idi-
oms may become available earlier than that of low predictable idiom.
Furthermore, an idiom that does not have a plausible literal interpretation
may more often be used fipwatively as opposed to literally. The higher
relative frequency of a phrase's figmafive meaning may constrain its rec-
ognition as a unit to a greater extent than idioms that can easily be used
nonidiomatically.

METHOD

Subjects
A total of 226 undergraduate students at the State University of New
York at Binghamton received credit toward an Introductory Psychology
class for their participation in the study. All subjects were native English
speakers.

Stimuli
The experimental materials consisted of 171 idiomatic expressSons chosen
from the Longman Dictionary of English Idioms (1979).
 IDIOM NORMS 255

Procedure

Familiarity scale. Familiarity was operationally defined in two ways.

Thirty subjects rated the subjective frequency of 171 idioms using a 7-point
scale ranging from never heard of before (1) to veryfrequently encountered (7)
and their meaningfulness using another 7-point scale ranging from is not
meaningful at all (1) to is very meaningful (7). The frequency scale instructed
participants to assess how often they have come across a given idiomatic
expression in any type of discourse context. The meaningfulness scale, on the
other hand, instructed participants to indicate the degree to which the idi-
omatic meaning of a given phrase was understandable. These two types of
ratings were used to include alternative measures of familiarity. Subjects were
given the following instructions:
For each of the 171 idioms on the following pages you will need to
make two judgments. First, decide how frequently you have seen,
heard, or used the idiom without consideration of whether or not you
know what it means. That is, rate the idiom's frequency of occurrence
independently from whether or not you know its meaning. Make your
ratings on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 meaning that you see or hear the
idiom very frequently. As the midpoint of the scale, a rating of 4 would
indicate that you have come across that idiom moderately often. You
may give the idiom a rating anywhere between 1 and 7, including a half
step between numbers.
After you make your frequency judgment, you will rate the same
idiom on a scale of 1 to 7, depending on how well you know the
meaning of the idiom. A rating of 1 would mean that you have abso-
lutely no idea what the idiom means, a 4 that you are moderately
certain of what it means, and a 7 would indicate that you are 100%
certain of the idiom meaning and could easily put it into your own
words. Once again you can give each idiom any rating from 1 to 7 on
the meaningfulness scale, including a half step, such as 3.5.'
Compositionality scale. Two groups of 28 subjects were each given a
booklet that contained either 111 or 60 idioms2They were asked to sort the
'Because all subjects were asked to make their meaningfulness judgments subsequent to
rating the idioms for frequency, results for the meaningfulness scale must be viewed with
caution, as they may have been biased by the subjects' frequency ratings.
2Differentgroups received an unequal number of idioms for the compositionality, predict-
ability, and literality judgments because these norms were originally intended as a way of
screening stimuli for use in a cross-modal priming study that examined the comprehension of
idioms (Titone & Connine, 1994). As a consequence, only a subset of the 171 idioms were
originally rated on all four scales. Because the authors noted the potential usefulness of these
ratings for future research, the missing items were later rated by different groups of subjects in
order to obtain a complete set of idioms that were rated on all four dimensions.
256 TITONE AND CONNINE

idioms into three classes depending on their degree of compositionality.

Instructions for the compositionality rating were directly taken from the
instructions that Gibbs, Nayak, and Cutting (1989) and Gibbs and Nayak
(1989) used to assess compositionality. Subjects were given a booklet that
contained the idioms and paraphrases of their Qurative meaning taken from
the Longman Dictionary of English idioms (1979). They were asked to group
the idioms into decomposable and nondecomposablecabgories. The follow-
ing instructions were given:

For each of the idioms on the following pages you will need to make
two judgments. First, you must sort all the idioms into two categories:
idioms whose individual components contribute to their overall *a-
tive meanings (decomposable idioms) and idioms whose individual
words do not make such a contribution (nondecomposableidioms). An
example of a decomposable idiom would be "save your skin. " Because
the word save relates to the overall idiom meaning (to protect orsave
yourselfl, this idiom would be d k d decompasable. An example of a
nondecomposable i d i ~ mwould be "chew the fat. " This idiom m m s
to converse about everyday mutters and would be called nondecomposa-
ble because the individual word meaniags do not directly relate to the
overall meaning of the idiom. The literal meanings of each idiom are
alongside in parentheses.'

After this initial sort was completed, subjects were asked to divide the list
of decomposable idioms into one group of idioms whose meaning is either
literally or metaphorically related to the figurative mea~ng.They were given
the following instructions:

Now that you have sorted all the idioms into these two categories,
you will go back only to the idioms that you have decided are decom-
posable and sort them into two groups, normally and abnormally
decomposable. Some decomposable idioms have words whose mean-
ings directly relate to their figurative interpretations. For example, the
idiom 'blay the market" has two words that literally relate to the idiom
meaning. Thus, the wordplay is closely related to the idea ofparticipat-
ing in, while the word market refers to the stock market. Idioms such
as '>lay the market" are called normally dmomposable.
On the other hand, there are idioms that are decomposable but
whose individual words have a metaphorical relation to the idiom
meaning. Consider the idiom "save your skin. This idiom means to
"

3Exampleidioms in the instructions for all of the &were varied, such that an idiom that
served as an example in the instructions was not included in the booklet to be rated.
 IDIOM NORMS 257

protect yourself: Although there is a fairly close relationship between

save and protect, the word skin refers to yourself in a less literal and
more metaphorical way. Idioms such as "save your skin" are called
abnormally decomposable.
Predictability scale. Three additional groups of 28 subjects were used to
assess predictability. Subjects were presented with three booklets that con-
tained 60 idioms and 102 filler control phrases4 with the last word of each
phrase omitted. They were told to complete the phrase with the first word
that came to mind. Specifically, subjects were instructed:

On the following pages you will find a list of phrase fragments. Your
task is to complete these fragments with the first word that comes to
mind, and write your answer on the line beneath each phrase fragment.
For example, you might get an incomplete phrase such as the little boy
really wanted to. In this case, the first word that might come to you is
play. If this were so, you would write the word play in the space
provided beneath the phrase. This would complete the phase as the little
boy really wanted to play.
It is important to realize that although there aren't any right or
wrong ways to complete these phrase fragments, you should try to
complete these phrases such that they are as meaningful as possible.
For example, although it is possible that the first word that came to
your mind when reading the phrase fragment the boy really wanted to
might be foot (if your foot was suddenly itchy at that moment), com-
pleting the fragment with foot does not result in a meaningful phrase
(e.g., the boy really wanted to foot). Therefore, in a case like this, your
task would be to indicate the first word that came to you that can
complete the phrase meaningfully.

Literality scale. Finally, two groups of 28 subjects rated the idioms for
literality. One group received a booklet that contained 111 idioms and the
other group received a booklet that contained 60 idioms. Subjects were
instructed to decide whether there was a potential literal interpretation for
these phrases, and if so, how plausible it was on a 7-point scale. A rating of
1 indicated that the idiom did not have a possible literal interpretation. A
rating of 7 indicated that the idiom definitely had a plausible literal interpre-
tation. Intermediate values of the scale reflected judgments of the plausibility
of these phrases interpreted literally. Subjects were given the following in-
structions:
.TO keep the proportions of idiom to filler phrase fragments constant across all groups of
subjects, two lists shared nine idioms. Only ratings from one of the lists were tabulated for those
nine items.
258 TITONE AND CONNINE

For each of the idioms on the following pages you will need to make
a literality judgment. While all of the idioms have a meaningful idi-
omatic or figurative interpretation, only some of them have a well-
formed literal meaning. For example, the idiom "kick the bucket"
figuratively means to die and literally means to strike a pail with your
foot. However, the idiom "underthe weather, "which fi~rativefy means
to be ill, does not have as clear a literal meaairag (if any at all) as
compared to "kick the bucket" (e.g., it is unclear what it means to
literally be "under the weather").
Your task in rating these idioms is to dwi& if there is a possible
literal interpretation, and if so, how plausible it is on a 7-point scale.
That is, rate the idioms based on how likely the literal meaning of the
phrase is (if you believe one exists). A rating of 1 would indicate that
the idiom definitely does not have any possible literal interpretation and
therefore is completely implausible. A rating of 7 would indicate that
the idiom definitely has a clear and well-formed literal interpretation
that is very plausible. Intermediate values of the scale should reflect
your judgments of the plausibility of these p k r a ~ interpreted
s literally.
If you believe that an idiom has a possible literal interpretation but that
it is not very likely, you should use the intermediatevalues of the scale.
Generally speaking, your ratings should rreflcct the degree to which each
idiom has a possible literal interpretation and how likely this interpreta-
tions is.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Measures on the Dimensions

The idiom ratings for the four scales appear in Appendix A and are indexed
by item. The means and s w a r d deviations are presented for the frequency,
meaningfulness, and literality ratings. The compositionality j u d p n t s are
presented in terms of the proportion of subjects that sorted a parcicuhr item
into a particular category. The predictability ratings are presented in terms
of the proportion of subjects who completed the phrase fragments idiomati-
cally. The results of each wale will be discussed in turn.

Familiarity. Recall that familiarity was measured by two subscales, rat-

ings of frequency and of meaningfulness. The frequency ratings ranged from
1.70, for the item "go the whole hog," to 6.8, for the item "out of the blue. "
An example of a moderately frequent idiom (i.e., a rating of 4.0) is "make a
clean sweep. " The mean frequency rating was 4.49 (SD = 1.Z).The mean-
ingfulness ratings ranged from 3.0, for the item "rise to the bait, " to 6.98, for
 IDIOM NORMS 259

the item "speak your mind. " An example of a moderately meaningful idiom
(i.e., a rating of 3.98) was "upset the applecart. " The mean meaningfulness
rating was 5.8 (SD = .99).

Compositionality. The results of the compositionality ratings are re-

ported in terms of each sorting task and category. For the initial nont
decomposable sorting task, there was a mean proportion of 58.1% for the
nondecomposable category and a mean proportion of 41.9% for the decom-
posable category (SD = 26.8 for the first sorting task). The proportions
ranged from 0% (e.g., "speak your mind'') to 100% (e.g., "shoot the breeze'')
for the nondecomposable category. Consequently, the proportions also
ranged from 0% (e.g., "shoot the breeze'') to 100% ("speak your mind") for
the decomposable category. A total of 61 idioms were classified as non-
decomposable, and a total of 26 idioms were classified as decomposable,
using the 75% agreement criterion employed in prior studies (Gibbs &
Nayak, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989). However, this crite-
rion may be too strict for concluding group membership in the present study.
A Z approximation of the binomial distribution for the non/decomposabil-
ity ratings indicates that 73% agreement in one category would be significant
at p < .O1 in a two-tailed test (null probability = SO). This criterion results
in a total of 63 idioms rated as nondecomposable and 29 idioms rated
as decomposable. The agreement criterion of 67% would be significant at
p < .05 in a two-tailed test. This criterion results in 72 idioms classified as
nondecomposable and 38 classified as decomposable.
The results of the second sorting task, in which subjects classified decom-
posable idioms into either abnormally or normally decomposable categories,
is more difficult to characterize because it is dependent on the selection
criterion used for the nonldecomposability sort. Using a 67% criterion of
decomposability agreement for the first sorting task and a 75% criterion
agreement for the second abnormaltnormal decomposability sorting task,
seven idioms were classified as abnormally decomposable and eight idioms
were classified as normally decomp~sable.~ An example of an idiom rated as
abnormally decomposable was "by word of mouth, " and an example of an
idiom rated as normally decomposable was "cash in your chips. "
Taken together, the results of the two sorting tasks differ from those of
Gibbs and his colleagues in terms of the proportions of idioms that fell into

The 67% criterion for the first sorting procedure was chosen in order to maximize the use
of decomposable idioms from which to select abnormally and normally decomposable types.
The use of the 75% criterion for the abnormallylnormally decomposable sorting task was
selected based on both prior research (Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel,
1989) and the fact that the criterion according to the binomial distribution will vary depending
on the number of subjects that actually rated a given idiom.
260 TITONE AND CONNINE

any of the three categories. For example, Gibbs and Nay& (1989) reported
that the percentage of idbms rated as nondecomposable, a b n o d y decom-
posable, or normally decomposable was approximately 30% for all groups
(therefore, 60% decomposable; only 8% were not categorizable). In the pre-
sent study, using the criterion described for the second sorting task (67%
non Idecomposability agreement, 75% abnormal1normal decomposability
agreement), 42% of the total idioms rated were judged to be nondecomposa-
ble and 22% were judged to be decomposable. Looking only at the 22%
decompowble items, 4% of the total 171 idioms wwe judged to be abnor-
mally decomposable and 5% were judged to be normally d m p o s a b l e .
The level of agreement in the compositionality judgments di.EFemd
markedly from previous studies. In an attanapt to determine the source of the
inconsistencies, we conducted a second compoitionality sorting study. In
particular, we sought to determine whether the literal pamphrase supplied
with the idioms inflwnced the compo&iana%tyjud&mmts. In the second
compositionality study, a set of 114 idioms from the previous study were
presented to subjects (n = 28) without a literal paraphrase. Of the 30 idioms
rated as nondecomposablefrom Study 1,22 were jud@ to be nondwompos-
able in Study 2 (75% criterion agmmmt). Of the 11 idioms rated as &om-
posable in Study 1, 8 were rated as dec;omposable in Study 2. Noronally
decomposable idioms showed an agmmmt of two out of three idioms, and
no matches were found for abnormally decomposable idioms. This compari-
son reflects the overall trend for subjects to rate idiom as nondecompmable
and shows a certain amount of consistency for these ratings across diffwent
groups of subjects and differinginstructions.

Predictability. Predictability ratings ranged from 0.0 to 1.0, and the

mean probability of compkting the plums idiomaticrally was .32 (SD =
.32). As an example of the high predictable idioms, "be on cloud nine" was
completed idiomatically 93% of the time. h contrast, the idiom "haveafling "

was never comp1eted idiomatically. The idiom "lend an ear" was completed
idiomatically 50% of the time.

Literality. The literality ratings ran@ from 1.5, for the idiom ''makeno
bones about it, " to 6.56, for the idiom "skiate on thin ice. "The mean literality
rating was 3.99 (SD = 1.48). An example of an idiam that was given a
moderate literality rating (4.0) is "bust a gut. "

Relations Among the Dimensions and Measures

To examine the relations among the dimensions and measures, a correla-
tion was conducted on the fallowing variabb: frequs~~~y,
memh@&wss,
nondecomposability, abnormal decomposability, normal decomposability,
 IDIOM NORMS 261

predictability, and literality. The correlation matrix is presented in

Table 1.
There were a number of significant correlations between the dimensions.
First, ratings from the frequency scale were highly correlated with ratings
from the meaningfulness scale (r = .913, df = 169, p < .01). This result
indicates that the frequency with which an idiom is encountered is related to
its meaningfulness, and/or the ability of a phrase to motivate meaning will
influence its frequency of use in the language. Practically speaking, the results
suggest that either of these two measures may be used as an indicant of idiom
familiarity. The significant negative correlations between either abnormal
decomposability or normal decomposability and nondecomposability reflect
the proportional aspect of these ratings and are therefore not theoretically
meaningful.
Predictability positively correlated with both frequency (r = .327, df =
169,p < .Ol) and meaningfulness (r = .410, df = 169,p < .01), and did not
correlate with any of the other dimensions. These results suggest that idiom
predictability is partially related to the familiarity of a phrase, irrespective of
a potential literal interpretation or degree of compositionality.In terms of the
Configuration model, the correlation between predictability and familiarity
may suggest a mechanism by which the connections between the word nodes
of an idiom become more heavily weighted for some expressions as compared
to others.
Literality negatively correlated with abnormal decomposability (r =
- .l88, df = 171, p < .05). Although the correlation is extremely low, this
result suggests that abnormally decomposable idioms, phrases whose word
meanings metaphorically relate to the idiomatic interpretation, were less

TABLE 1
Intercorrelation Matrix for Frequency, Meaningfulness,
Nondecomposability,Abnormal Decomposability. Normal
Decomposability, Predictability, and Literality

FREQ MEAN NDEC ABDEC NRDEC PRED LIT

FREQ 1.O - - - - - -
MEAN .913** 1.0 - - - - -
NDEC -.007 -,067 1.O - - - -
ABDEC -.018 .030 - .673** 1.0 - - -
NRDEC .028 ,068 - .790** ,080 1.O - -
PRED .327** .410D* -.004 .001 .006 1.0 -
LIT .044 .054 .I38 - .188* - .029 .005 1.0
-

Nore. FREQ = frequency; MEAN = meaningfulness; NDEC = nondecomposability;

ABDEC = abnormaldecomposability; NRDEC = normal decomposability; PRED = predict-
ability; LIT = literality.
*p < .05. **p < .001.
262 TITONE AND CONNINE

likely to be literally well formed (and vice versa). No other scales were
significantly correlated.

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this study was to report descriptive norms for a group of
idioms on the basis of four dimensions that have been shown to influeace
idiom processing. These dimensions were orthogonal with the exception of
predictability, which correlated with both alternative measures of familiarity,
frequency and meaningfulness.
Another interesting aspect of the ratings concerns subjects' judgments
about the compositionality of the set of idioms. In three separate studies by
Gibbs and colleagues (Gibbs & Nayak, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, et al.,
1989; Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989), it has been reported that subjects can
reliably classify idioms into the t b classes of compositioaality. Gibbs and
Nayak (1989) reported that 30 out of 40 idioms (75% of the idioms used) were
classified into one category at h s t 75% of the time, and the mean proportion
of agreement for nandecom~sable,abwrmally decompsable, and nor-
mally decomposable was 88%, 79%' and 86%' mspmtivdy. Gibbs, Nayak,
and Cutting (1989) reported the identical results using a majority of the
idioms rated in Gibbs and Nayak (1989). Generally, reliable agreement for
compositionality was not found in our study. Only Wh of the 171 idioms
used were classified into one of the three categories using Gibbs's 75% crite-
rion.
These results involving present and prior investiptions have imphations
for considering the dimension of compositionality in idiom processing. It
may be that grouping idioms into categaries based on compositionality uti-
lizes a type of linguistic knowledge that is not easily accemssd. One reservation
in the use of these norms, therefore, concerns the reliability of the propor-
tions found for the abnormal and normal decomposability judgments. Very
few of the 171 idioms were reliably rated as either abnormally or normally
decomposable. This suaEggests that subjects cannot easily make this distinction
for all but a few idiosyncratic phrases. In contrast, the decomposable and
nondecomposable sorting task was more reliable, resulting in 42% non-
decomposable and 22% decomposable idioms for a 67% criterion of agree-
ment. The fact that 36% of the idioms were uncategorizable, however,
suggests that judgments of semantic analyzability are more difficult than
suggested by previous research.
In conclusion, we attempted to systematically relate some of the ways in
which idioms may differ. We hope that the norms reported in this study for
the dimensions of familiarity, compositionality, predictabdity, and literality
provide a means by which future idiom-comprehension research can screen
 IDIOM NORMS 263

and select potential stimuli, and will contribute to the theoretical treatment
of these variables.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by NIDCD Grant R29 26587 to Cynthia M.

Connine. Additional support was provided by the Center for Cognitive and
Psycholinguistic Science.
We thank Richard Honeck and Robert Hoffman for their helpful com-
ments on the manuscript. We also thank Mike Vitevich, Dawn Blasko, and
Lara DelMolino for their assistance in data collection.

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 APPENDIX A

Idiom FREQ SEM MEAN SEM NDEC DEC ABDEC NRDEC PRED LIT SEM

A piece of cake
Add fuel to the iire
Armed to the teeth
Back of one's mind
Back to square one
Be a wet blanket
Be on cloud nine
Be the cat's whiskers
Be the spitting image
Beat to the punch
Beg the question
Behind the times
Below the belt
Bet your bottom dollar
Bite someone's head off
Bite the bullet
Bite the dust
Blow someone's mind
Blow to kingdom come
Blow your top
Born with a silver spoon
Break the ice
Bring home the bacon
Burn the midnight oil
Bury the hatchet
Bust a gut
Button your lips
ru By word of mouth
Call the shots
 APPENDIX A (Continued)
8 Idiom FREQ SEM MEAN SEM NDEC DEC ABDEC NRDEC PRED LIT SEM

Can't believe my ears

Carry a torch
Cash in your chips
Chew the fat
Clear the air
Cfhnb on the band wagon
Come up roses
Cook his goose
Cool his heels
Cost an a m and a leg
Cover up ane's tracks
Crack a joke
Crock the whip
Cramp someone's style
Daim to m d e r tune
Dressed to kill
Drive a hard bargain
Eat his words
Face the music
Fall from grpce
Fall on dcaf ears
Feather me's nest
Fish out of water
Fit as a &We
Flash in the pan
Food for thought
Foot the bill
F o m someone's hand
Frighten out of one's wits
 APPENDIX A (Continued)

Idiom FREQ SEM MEAN SEM NDEC DEC ABDEC NRDEC PRED LIT SEM

Frog in one's throat

Get the eye
Get the picture
Get your goat
Give it a whirl
Give plenty of rope
Give the cold shoulder
Give the creeps
Give the sack
Give the willies
Go against the grain
Go the whole hog
Go to pieces
Grease the wheels
Handle with kid gloves
Have a fling
Have an axe to grind
Have cold feet
Have egg on your face
He hit the jackpot
Hit the sack
Hit the sauce
Hold your horses
Horse of another color
In a pickle
In hot water
In seventh heaven
In the nick of time
Jump the gun
I APPENDIX A (Continued)

Idiom FREQ SEM MEAN SEM NDEC DEC ABDEC NRDEC PRED LIT SEM

Keep a level head

Keep an ace up your sleeve
Kick the bucket
Kick up your heels
Lay down the law
Lead up a Mnd aHey
LsMmbyhsart
Lmsrntheropes
LcRdmeaf
Let the art out of the bag
Leftsrofthelaw
Lk tbwgb one's teeth
Loag arm of the law
Loee face
Lose om's touch
Laee your cool
Low gnip
Mrte a dean sweep
W e a pa~s
Make no bones about
haolre the same
NIiastheboat
Nip in the bud
Nmagrudge
Out of the blue
Out of thin air
Over the hill
Pack a ptlnch
Paint the town
 APPENDIX A (Continued)

Idiom FREQ SEM MEAN SEM NDEC DEC ABDEC NRDEC PRED LIT SEM

Par for the course

Pass the buck
Pay lip service
Pay through the nose
Play by ear
Play the market
Play with fire
Pop the question
Pour one's heart out
Praise to the skies
Pull someone's leg
Pull the plug
Put the screws on
Rack one's brains
Raise the roof
Rake over the coals
Read between the lines
Ride the storm
Rise to the bait
Rule of thumb
Rule with an iron fist
Run into the ground
Save your skin
Scream blue murder
Seal one's fate
Shoot the breeze
Shut your trap
ru Sit on the fence
% Skate on thin ice
 APPENDIX A (Continued)
N
4
0
Idiom FREQ SEM MEAN SEM NDEC DEC ABDEC NRDEC PRED LIT SEM

Slip one's mind

Speak your mind
SpiII the beans
Spin a yam
Steal someone's thunder
Steal the show
Swallow one's pride
Take someone to the cleaners
Take the back seat
Take the bull by the horns
Take the cake
Take with a grain of salt
TaIk a mile a minute
Throw the book at
Throw to the wolves
Tie the knot
Tip of the iceberg
Twist someone's arm
Two peas in a pod
Under someone's thumb
Under the weather
Upset the applecart
Waste your breath
Wear the pants
W1tb flying colors
Would give the world

Note FREQ = frequency ratings; MEAN = meaningfulness ratings, NDEC = percentage classified as nondecomposabte; DEC = percentage
classified as decomposabIe; ABDEC = percentage classified as abnormally decomposable; NRDEC = percentage classified as normally decomposable:
PRED = predictability probability of idiomatic completion; LIT = literality ratings; SEM = standard error of the mean