terminology - What do you call a pair of words which would be meaningless without one of them?


I am referring to a set of words that wouldn't make sense if one word or the other was omitted. Like barbershop quartet, or Cyber Security. What do you exactly call this set of words?



Answer



A collocation is also an option, though the meaning is broader than requested.



In corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance.


A pair or group of words that are juxtaposed in such a way



  • “strong coffee” and “heavy drinker” are typical English collocations



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