This study explores one facet of idiomatic creativity: lexical substitution, focusing on substitution for nouns in Korean, Japanese, and English idioms. Analyzing 15 idioms per language, we identify patterns in how speakers creatively replace nouns in the canonical idioms, revealing cognitive and linguistic strategies for idiom manipulation. These strategies serve communicative goals such as frame role assignment, reducing the burden of referentiality, and contextual relevance. We highlight two key findings: (1) three distinct patterns of synonymy based on the replaced noun’s literal, figurative, or extended meaning, and (2) the emergence of rare collocations which are nevertheless immediately interpretable - a phenomenon which we argue stems from the complex referential demands of idiomatic expressions.
Benom et al. (Mon,) studied this question.