This study represents the first critical examination of the contexts and ways in which idioms
and fixed expressions of two or more words (phraseological units) such as let sleeping dogs lie
try one's luck or at hand were collected commented upon and also analysed by English language
scholars between about 1440 and 1800. The large-scale investigation surveys theoretical and
practical approaches including proverb studies treatises on rhetoric and style
foreign-language teaching collections of phrases bilingual and monolingual lexicography
translation universal and philosophical language schemes shorthand systems and English
grammar books. This pioneering study is intended to contribute to the formation of English
historical phraseology as a new subdiscipline in English linguistics.
