932: What Makes a Phrase Jun 28, 2017

After three days of discussing what makes a word a word, the question arose of what makes a phrase a phrase. While a phrase and a hyphenated word are similar in that they convey a single concept through a combination of other elements, a phrase is made up of syntactically distinct elements. In the same way that a word can not be split apart while still being intelligible, a phrase must be delivered as one unit in order to convey the intended meaning. "Needle in a haystack" is an idiomatic phrase, and in the sentence "it was like finding a needle in a haystack" the phrase communicates one, metaphorical concept which furthermore could not really be split up, such as "it was like finding a needle shiny in a haystack" as that would mean something else more literal, describing the quality of the needle. Not all phrases need to be idiomatic though, such as a prepositional phrase like "in the house", though everything mentioned before still holds.