Concerning idioms

Recently, we've been revisiting some old disputes in alt.english.usage concerning such idioms as "could care less"/"couldn't care less" and "you've got another think coming"/"you've got another thing coming."

I've made certain arguments concerning what constitutes an idiom, in the sense "idiomatic expression," not "language" or "manner of speech." Yesterday I looked up the subject in three different books about the English language, from which I have excerpted the following:
[nq:1]From the entry "idiom" in Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (aMerriam-Webster publication which now goes by the name of *Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage*) (C) 1989:[/nq]
(quote)
idiom Idiom is a word you will find with some frequency in this book, as in most usage books. It is not an especially precise word Roberts 1954 calls it "loose and unscientific" and it is generally used by usage writers for some construction or expression that they approve of but cannot analyze.
Roberts observes that for some reason idiom often refers in English to combinations involving prepositions and adverbs you will find plenty of those throughout this book. The word is also frequently applied to those expressions or constructions that either are not transparent from the usual current meanings of the individual words that make them up or that appear to violate some grammatical precept. Vizetelly 1906, for example, defended ice cream and ice water as idioms, because they had been attacked as illogical .

The tension between idiomatic usage and logical analysis is one of the chief sources of usage comment, and has been since at least the middle of the 18th century.
(end quote)
The following is from the entry for "idiom" in The Cambridge Guide to English Usage by Pam Peters, Cambridge University Press, (C) 2004:
(quote)
idiom
This word has been used in two ways in English, to refer to:
1 the collective usage of a particular group, as the idiom of sailors
2 a particular fixed phrase of ordinary usage, for example a redherring
The second use of idiom* is commoner by far nowadays. An *idiom in this sense is a fixed unit whose elements cannot be varied. Neither a red fish nor a reddish-colored herring can capture the meaning of the idiom a red herring. The meaning resides in the whole expression, and cannot be built up or extracted from its parts.

(end quote)
[nq:1]From *The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language,* 2nd ed., byDavid Crystal, Cambridge University Press, (C) 2003:[/nq]
(quote, from page 163)
IDIOMS
Two central features identify an idiom. The meaning of the idiomatic expression cannot be deduced by examining the meanings of the constituent lexemes. And the expression is fixed, both grammatically and lexically. Thus, put a sock in it means 'stop talking', and it is not possible to replace any of the lexemes and retain the idiomatic meaning. Put a stocking in it or put a sock on it must be interpreted literally or not at all.
(end quote)
*The Oxford Companion to the English Language,* edited by Tom McArthur, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (C) 1992, under the entry "idiom," had by far the longest discussion of any of these books on the subject of the idiom.
(quote)An expression unique to a language, especially one whose sense is not predictable from the meanings and arrangement of the elements, such as kick the bucket a slang term meaning 'to die', which has nothing obvious to do with kicking or buckets. In linguistics, the term idiomaticity refers to the nature of idioms and the degree to which a usage can be regarded as idiomatic. Some expressions are more holophrastic and unanalysable than others: for example, to take steps is literal and non-idiomatic in The baby took her first steps, is idiomatic in The baby took her first steps, is figurative, grammatically open, and semi-idiomatic in They took some steps to put the matter right, and is fully idiomatic and grammatically closed in She took steps to see that was done.

These examples demonstrate a continuum of meaning and use that is true for many usages. No such continuum exists, however, between He kicked the bucket out of the way and He kicked the bucket last night (meaning 'He died last night'). Such idioms are particularly rigid: for example, they cannot usually be passivized (no (asterisk) The bucket was kicked ) or otherwise adapted (no (asterisk)bucket-kicking as a synonym for death ).
(end quote)
The author goes on to write about creative adaptations/creative wordplay, about which I have written in previous posts (a writer using "on the other paw" instead of "on the other hand" when writing about cats, for example). So there can be a limited amount of substitution to the words in an idiom. "Put a stocking in it" might be used as a sort of parody version of "Put a sock in it," under the appropriate circumstances.An aspect of idiom which is more important than I realized is the fixed nature of it. This supports my view that "couldn't care less" and "you have another think coming" are indeed idioms, which others have denied. "I couldn't care less" is an idiom because you cannot manipulate it and retain the same meaning. You can't, for example, say "less could not be cared by me." Similarly, in the case of "If that's what you think, then you've got another think coming," you cannot substitute "Another think is coming to you because you think what you do." You can, however, say for "The dog bit the man" that "The man was bitten by the dog." That's not an idiom.

A "man-bites-dog story," on the other hand, is very much an idiom It's not acceptable to refer to a "dog-is-bitten-by-a-man story."
So we should keep in mind, when discussing idioms, the fixed nature of such expressions. It is, ironically, this very fixed nature which permits "I couldn't care less" to become "I could care less" without any change in meaning, if the change was due to phonetics, or, alternatively, for an ironic "I could care less" to be changed to the straightforward "I could care less," with the meaning "I don't care at all," under the influence of "I couldn't care less," which had by then come to mean "I don't care at all." Similarly, it is because of the fixed nature of "You have another think coming" that "thing" could be substituted for "think" without the idiom suffering the slightest loss of meaning.

Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com