Although it is often assumed that idioms are too informal for use in academic English, two studies have identified idioms which occur fairly frequently in spoken and written academic English. This page describes idioms in academic English, giving information on what an idiom is, why academic idioms should be studied, as well as a list of academic idioms for spoken and written English from a recent study of idioms (Miller, 2019), giving first background to the creation of the list and finally the list itself.

What is an idiom?

An idiom is a fixed, well-established, multi-word expression, the meaning of which is not deducible from the individual words. The following are some examples of idioms in everyday (not academic) English.

• Raining cats and dogs - raining very hard
• Break a leg - said before a performance, meaning 'good luck'
• Behind one's back - secretly

The following are some examples of idioms for academic English use (a complete list is given below).

• On the other hand - from another point of view (showing contrast)
• Bear in mind - think of something, especially as a warning
• The bottom line - the main or essential point
• Take on board - accept or deal with (a problem or idea)

Why study academic idioms?

Idioms are common in everyday spoken and written English. Although it is often assumed that idioms are too informal for use in academic English, two studies (Simpson and Mendis, 2003, and Miller, 2019) have identified idioms which are used in academic contexts, more commonly in spoken academic contexts though also in academic writing. In Miller's study, idioms in spoken academic texts, including repetitions, occurred with a frequency of 835 per million words, or close to 0.1%. While this figure is not as high as, say, words in the Academic Word List (10%) or the Academic Collocation List (1.4%), productive knowledge of idioms will assist students in becoming part of the academic discourse community, while receptive knowledge will aid them in understanding spoken or written texts.

Miller reports that idioms may sometimes be signposted by lecturers (e.g. via the phrase as it were) or writers (e.g. via the phrase as they say or by use of quotation marks). However, these methods do not always signal idiom use, do not help students to understand the meaning of idioms, and in fact add a layer of complexity to academic English study (in terms of what as it were and as they say mean and why quotation marks are used in that way).

Academic Idioms List: background to the list

The list of academic idioms (below) comes from the study by Julia Miller (2019), which used two academic English corpuses: the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus for spoken texts (lectures and seminars), and the Oxford Corpus of Academic English (OCAE) for written texts. Only idioms with a frequency of more than 1.2 per million words (pmw) in the BASE were included.

The range of idiom use is shown by the number of texts in which each idiom occurs, as well as the number of faculties (i.e. disciplinary groups) it occurs in. Miller's study used four such faculties, namely Social Sciences (which had the highest idiom use with 234 pmw), Arts and Humanities (which had 191 idioms pmw), Life and Medical Sciences (183 pmw), and Physical Sciences (which had the least frequent use, 76 pmw).

Most idioms in the list occur in more than one faculty, meaning they are suitable for study by all students of academic English. The most frequent idiom used in only one faculty, gold standard (24th most frequent idiom in spoken academic English and 10th most frequent in written academic English), was used only in the Life Sciences (medical articles).

Academic Idioms List: Spoken

The list below gives spoken academic idioms from the BASE (British Academic Spoken English) corpus, listed in order of frequency. There are 170 idioms in total. There is a separate version of 38 idioms for written academic English (use the button above the table). Hyperlinks of definitions are included for some of the idioms.

Number	Idiom	Spoken frequency per million words (BASE)	Written frequency per million words (OCAE)	Number of texts in which the idiom occurs	Number of faculties in which the idiom occurs
1	on the other hand	64.11	88.12	30	4
2	bear in mind	46.73	10.17	42	4
3	on the one hand	37.74	31.87	30	4
4	the balance of power	10.78	6.20	8	2
5	at the end of the day	14.98	1.36	13	4
6	on the other [hand]	10.19	20.34	12	3
7	the bottom line	8.39	2.50	8	4
8	take on board	7.79	0.00	13	4
9	by and large	7.19	0.04	12	4
10	a step further/back	7.19	6.21	12	4
11	take for granted	7.19	0.01	9	3
12	in the hands of	6.59	12.54	10	3
13	along the lines of	6.59	9.24	9	3
14	in its own right	5.99	9.27	10	4
15	across the board	5.99	1.21	7	3
16	at the back of one's mind	5.99	0.30	4	2
17	sit on the fence	5.99	0.12	2	2
18	in the long run	5.39	7.84	9	4
19	bad news	5.39	2.75	8	4
20	driving force	5.39	6.21	8	4
21	on the face of it	5.39	2.57	8	4
22	in (the) light of	5.39	34.99	8	3
23	come into play	5.39	4.26	8	3
24	gold standard	5.39	6.66	6	1
25	what on earth	4.79	0.17	7	3
26	go without saying	4.79	1.85	6	2
27	trial and error	4.79	1.85	5	3
28	down the line	4.19	0.08	7	3
29	over the top	4.19	0.05	6	3
30	state of the art	4.19	1.36	4	2
31	the man/woman in the street	4.19	0.28	3	3
32	stepping stone	4.19	0.66	2	1
33	from scratch	3.59	1.86	6	3
34	bridge the gap	3.59	1.85	6	3
35	the big picture	3.59	1.30	6	3
36	in the early days	3.59	2.33	5	4
37	get one's head (a) round	3.59	0.02	5	4
38	go hand in hand with	3.59	2.68	5	3
39	keep an eye on	3.59	0.78	5	3
40	hang on a minute	3.59	0.04	5	2
41	on the spot	3.59	0.84	4	4
42	get to grips with	3.59	1.78	4	3
43	go through the roof	3.59	0.06	4	2
44	full circle	3.00	0.54	5	3
45	that's another story	3.00	0.27	5	3
46	how on earth	3.00	0.08	5	3
47	cast one's mind back	3.00	0.04	5	3
48	last resort	3.00	4.05	5	2
49	the other side of the coin	3.00	0.54	5	2
50	ring a bell	3.00	0.15	5	1
51	good old days	3.00	0.27	4	3
52	grey area	3.00	0.60	4	2
53	out of the blue	3.00	0.05	3	3
54	golden age	3.00	2.96	3	2
55	touchy-feely	3.00	0.05	3	1
56	in the short run	3.00	4.19	2	2
57	spring to mind	2.40	0.31	4	3
58	on the right track	2.40	0.28	4	3
59	have a stab at	2.40	0.25	4	3
60	get the picture	2.40	0.08	4	3
61	the high point	2.40	1.52	4	2
62	it's early days	2.40	0.01	4	2
63	the whole story	2.40	1.41	3	3
64	do the job	2.40	0.63	3	3
65	move the goalposts	2.40	0.08	3	3
66	behind the scenes	2.40	1.36	3	2
67	in the pipeline	2.40	0.31	3	2
68	on the back burner	2.40	0.11	3	2
69	bog standard	2.40	0.02	3	2
70	out of one's hands	2.40	0.00	3	2
71	call the cavalry	2.40	0.00	3	2
72	beg the question	2.40	2.18	2	2
73	get something straight	2.40	0.05	2	2
74	play ball	2.40	0.05	2	1
75	boil down to	1.80	1.13	3	3
76	in store	1.80	0.34	3	3
77	make up one's own mind	1.80	0.20	3	3
78	have up one's sleeve	1.80	0.12	3	3
79	go down that route	1.80	0.09	3	3
80	get one's act together	1.80	0.08	3	3
81	on one hand	1.80	2.58	3	2
82	overall picture	1.80	1.14	3	2
83	golden rule	1.80	1.05	3	2
84	have a life of its own	1.80	0.89	3	2
85	turn something on its head	1.80	0.76	3	2
86	fall into place	1.80	0.30	3	2
87	so far so good	1.80	0.23	3	2
88	on one's hands	1.80	0.11	3	2
89	in the same boat	1.80	0.09	3	2
90	take home message	1.80	0.11	3	1
91	joe public	1.80	0.04	3	1
92	kicking and screaming	1.80	0.02	3	1
93	rule of thumb	1.20	2.98	2	2
94	hot spots	1.80	0.94	2	2
95	ring true	1.80	0.30	2	2
96	put your finger on	1.80	0.24	2	2
97	get a handle on	1.80	0.21	2	2
98	shut up shop	1.80	0.01	2	2
99	set something in stone	1.80	0.12	2	1
100	swings and roundabouts	1.80	0.02	2	1
101	go in one ear and out the other	1.80	0.00	2	1
102	in a nutshell	1.20	1.17	2	2
103	fall foul of	1.20	1.15	2	2
104	set the scene	1.20	1.15	2	2
105	have the upper hand	1.20	0.88	2	2
106	on the side	1.20	0.84	2	2
107	make up one's mind	1.20	0.76	2	2
108	fly in the face of	1.20	0.71	2	2
109	get carried away	1.20	0.65	2	2
110	moot point	1.20	0.47	2	2
111	someone's bread and butter	1.20	0.38	2	2
112	stand to reason	1.20	0.38	2	2
113	devil's advocate	1.20	0.37	2	2
114	get one's message across	1.20	0.30	2	2
115	deliver the goods	1.20	0.23	2	2
116	a bad press	1.20	0.19	2	2
117	the powers that be	1.20	0.18	2	2
118	set foot in	1.20	0.14	2	2
119	happily ever after	1.20	0.11	2	2
120	shift gears	1.20	0.11	2	2
121	get down to the nitty gritty	1.20	0.09	2	2
122	in one's sights	1.20	0.08	2	2
123	brain power	1.20	0.07	2	2
124	not to mince one's words	1.20	0.06	2	2
125	throw somebody in at the deep end	1.20	0.06	2	2
126	cover one's bases	1.20	0.06	2	2
127	weird and wonderful	1.20	0.06	2	2
128	cast an eye over	1.20	0.06	2	2
129	above one's station	1.20	0.05	2	2
130	have a go	1.20	0.02	2	2
131	in the same ballpark	1.20	0.02	2	2
132	pat on the back	1.20	0.02	2	2
133	sit on one's hands	1.20	0.02	2	2
134	throw up one's hands	1.20	0.02	2	2
135	watch this space	1.20	0.02	2	2
136	go down the road of	1.20	0.01	2	2
137	this that and the other	1.20	0.01	2	2
138	get cracking	1.20	0.01	2	2
139	give someone a shout	1.20	0.01	2	2
140	have a crack at	1.20	0.01	2	2
141	not to put too fine a point on it	1.20	0.01	2	2
142	give the game away	1.20	0.01	2	2
143	beat/get the hell out of something	1.20	0.00	2	2
144	get a move on	1.20	0.00	2	2
145	get one's thoughts together	1.20	0.00	2	2
146	hand on heart	1.20	0.00	2	2
147	quote somebody on something	1.20	0.00	2	2
148	put one's head above the parapet	1.20	0.00	2	2
149	a fair share	1.20	1.55	2	1
150	to say the least	1.20	1.10	2	1
151	grass roots movement	1.20	0.65	2	1
152	pick and choose	1.20	0.47	2	1
153	sow seeds of thought	1.20	0.37	2	1
154	at loggerheads	1.20	0.24	2	1
155	drag one's feet	1.20	0.21	2	1
156	in the driving seat	1.20	0.17	2	1
157	go back to square one	1.20	0.08	2	1
158	set in tablets of stone	1.20	0.07	2	1
159	dear to one's heart	1.20	0.06	2	1
160	off the top of one's head	1.20	0.05	2	1
161	end of story	1.20	0.05	2	1
162	in a rut	1.20	0.04	2	1
163	tick the boxes	1.20	0.04	2	1
164	round robin	1.20	0.02	2	1
165	dig one's heels in	1.20	0.02	2	1
166	stretch one's legs	1.20	0.02	2	1
167	get someone on board	1.20	0.00	2	1
168	on that note	1.20	0.00	2	1
169	tail end Charlie	1.20	0.00	2	1
170	jump up and down	1.20	0.00	2	1

References