1951, Gordon M. Messing, “Structuralism and Literary Tradition”, inLanguage, volume27, number 1, page 3:
Bally remarks in passing, as Hall does not, that the inversion intoujours est-il que is part of aset phrase and hence invariable.
2009, Bryan A. Garner,Garner on Language and Writing[1], page525:
American courts sometimes use cherry in place of apple, but the latter fruit vastly predominates. The American version is that rareset phrase that is not so well set, variations on the phrase being more common than the main phrase itself.
1992, Stanislaw Baranczak, "How to Translate Shakespeare's Humor?: (Reflections of a Polish Translator)", in thePerforming Arts Journal, volume 14, number 3, page 83:
If it proves clearly unfeasible to make the audience laugh at a thin and far-fetched joke, it is always better to change the way the joke works . . . for instance, a pun based on the speaker's taking literally someset phrase or metaphor with a pun based on phonetic similarity.
Specific kinds of set phrases may include:idioms, whose meanings cannot be determined from their parts;proverbs, whose meanings can be derived from their parts and which express practical wisdom and often take the form of complete sentences; andcatchphrases, set phrases associated with a specific person or group. Most idioms and proverbs are not set phrases, however, as significant variation is often possible. Also many idiomatic expressions do not form single units but allow intervening terms. Set phrases are oftenclichés orcolloquialisms, but these terms may include expressions other than set phrases.
