Modern trends and concepts in Phraseology

Task 2: Define to what types of set expressions the following PhUs belong and what cultural information they indicate:

No	PhUs	Description
	Hobson’s choice	No choices at all,originated with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England, who offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in his stall nearest to the door or taking none at all.
	Darby and Joan	Old married couple, the UK, Darby and Joan is still a way to describe an elderly and mutually devoted married couple who live a placid and uneventful life, often in humble circumstances. There are many Darby and Joan Clubs, so named, in various parts of the country, social clubs for pensioners, which hold dances and other events.
	A prodigal son	man or boy who has left his family in order to do something that the family disapprove of and has now returned home feeling sorry for what he has done: figure in a parable of Jesus (Luke 15:11–32); a wayward son who squanders his inheritance but returns home to find that his father forgives him.
	Nosey Parker	: a person who is too interested in what other people are doing : a nosy person MATTHEW PARKER, who was Archbishop of Canterbury (1559-75), had rather a reputation for prying into the affairs of others. He therefore acquired the nickname 'Nosey Parker'.
	To be a doubting Thomas	A doubting Thomas is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience — a reference to the Gospel of John's depiction of the Apostle Thomas, who, in John's account, refused to believe the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the ten other apostles until he could see and feel Jesus' crucifixion wounds.