Colours Used in Idioms in English and Czech

Abstract

This paper deals with idiomatic expressions in English and Czech with a special focus on idioms containing a colour word. It covers introduction to phraseography and phraseology. In the paper is explained how a phraseme is defined and what its formal and semantic properties are. The paper also deals with colour words, their semantic character and how it influences the meaning of phrasemes. On the theoretical background presented in this paper is based analysis comparing English and Czech phrasemes. Its aim is to determine level of equivalency which may be useful in translations.