The figurative and literal senses of idioms,or all idioms are not used equally

Two groups of college students (40 and 56) gave what they felt to be the literal and figurative interpretation of 30 different idiomatic expressions and rated their interpretations for frequency of use and for familiarity. Ratings were done on 7-point scales where 1=never and 7=very often. Subjects gave higher ratings to figurative interpretations than to literal interpretations and higher ratings of frequency than familiarity. Nevertheless, there was a high correlation between ratings of frequency and familiarity. It was also found that figurative ratings were independent of literal ratings. In the main, figurative ratings were found to be high (5–7) irrespective of their literal ratings. A small subgroup of idioms, however, had relatively low ratings on both scales. The differences noted between idioms may help to account for certain discrepancies that have appeared in recent experimental studies on idiom processing.