Here's a challenge: Assemble a meaningful phrase that returns fewer than 10 Google results. Now try "harsh reality" (151 billion results). Or "fearless leader" (a comparatively puny 25 billion).

“You shall know a word by the company it keeps,” are the words of J.R.Firth, who is said to have coined the terms ‘collocation’ and ‘collocability’ in 1950s. Ever since linguists and language teachers ...

Corpus studies have highlighted the role of multiword units in naturally occurring language. Speech theories, too, have underlined the linkage between such formulaic sequences- collocations in ...