An idiom may be defined as a grammatically complex expression A+B whose designatum is not completely expressible in terms of the designata of A and B respectively. [...] ( Given A (c1 • c2 • c3); B (c4 • c5) 'Idiom' ( ( Then (A+B) (c1 • c4 • c6 • c7) Examples: [...] 'Handschuh' "glove" ("hand-shoe"), 'rub noses with' "be on familiar terms with".
- Weinreich (1963), a pag.145

It is of great methodological importance to bear in mind the complementarity of polysemy and idiomaticity. For if, having formulated the designatum of A as (c1 • c2) and of B as (c3 • c4), we find that A+B has the designatum ( c1 • c5 • c3 • c4), the resulting idiomaticity of A+B may be merely an artifact of our failure [...] to state that A contains a disjunction leading to polysemy which is resolved in the context ______ +B. For example, if we tentatively define 'charge' as "fill with energy-providing content" ('charge batteries', 'charge guns'), and confront the definition with the expression 'charge an account', we may either call 'charge an account' an idiom or revise the description of 'charge' to show polysemy: "1. fill..., 2. burden".
- Weinreich (1963), a pag.146