Anglická adjektivní přirovnání: srovnání korpusového vzorku s výběrem ve standardní příručce idiomů

An adjectival simile is an established phraseological unit with a standardised form (blind as a bat). It is perhaps for this reason that it has not been attracting much attention, and most studies on similes focus on verbal similes. This study reports a significant diachronic shift in the usage of adjectival similes, identified by comparing a lexicographic sample with one from a corpus. Analysing corpus data, we collected a representative sample of 309 adjectival similes in English, which further served for the compilation of a “simile minimum” of 60 types. Both corpus samples were then contrasted with lexicographic lists from a dictionary of idioms: English Idioms and How to Use Them (Seidl & McMordie, 1978; 1988). The comparison shows that the lexicographic minimum (65 types) overlaps with that from the corpus by just one-third and the whole representative list (166 types) only by one-fifth. The significant disproportion can be explained as a shift in linguistic reality but also as a result of the dictionary authors’ idiolects or homogeneity of their data. These findings can serve for textbook and reference manual authors as a warning against relying too much on their own linguistic intuition.