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prejudices, recollections of its past history, scraps of folk songs
and fairy-tales.
In modern linguistics, there is confusion about the
terminology associated with these word-groups. Most Russian and
Ukrainian scholars use the term "phraseological unit"
(фразеологічна одиниця) which was first introduced by
Academician V.V. Vinogradov whose contribution to the theory of
Russian phraseology cannot be overestimated. The term "idiom"
widely used by western scholars has comparatively recently found
its way into Russian and Ukrainian phraseology but is applied
mostly to only a certain type of phraseological unit as it will be
clear from further explanations.
There are some other terms denoting more or less the same
linguistic phenomenon: set-expressions, set-phrases, phrases, fixed
word-groups, collocations. The terminology confusion reflects
insufficiency of positive or wholly reliable criteria by which
phraseological units can be distinguished from free word-groups.It
should be pointed out that the "freedom" of free word-groups is
relative and arbitrary. Nothing is entirely "free" in speech as its
linear relationships are governed, restricted and regulated, on the
one hand, by requirements of logic and common sense and, on the
other, by the rules of grammar and combinability. One can speak
of a black-eyed girl but not of a black-eyed table (unless in a piece
of modernistic poetry where anything is possible). Also, to say the
child was glad is quite correct, but a glad child is wrong because
in Modern English glad is attributively used only with a very
limited number of nouns (e. g. glad news), and names of persons
are not among them.
Free word-groups are so called not because of any absolute
freedom in using them but simply because they are each time built
up anew in the speech process whereas idioms are used as ready-
made units with fixed and constant structures.
Scholars suggest the following criteria for distinguishing
between free wordgroups and set-phrases.

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