Is there a term for words that super narrow in usage? I.e. "Figment"

Question

There are few other ones I've thought of and forgotten, but it seems there are some words in English that although seemingly very general, are actually very narrow in usage.
Like the word "figment" - it's always followed by the same 2-3 words in 99.9% of cases.
I had a list of others, but forgot them at the moment.
It's most common to discover when teaching someone else English, I've found.
Is there a list of these, and do they have a name, or are they just a random musing? Just curious.
And can you think of other examples?

Edwin Ashworth · Accepted Answer

There is a name for fixed expressions/idioms containing words not found elsewhere: cranberry collocations.
From Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English: A Corpus-based Approach. (Rosamund Moon; 1998):

5.1.3 Cranberry Collocations While most lexemes in the general lexicon never occur in [fixed expressions / idioms], a few never occur
outside FEIs. Many of these are rare fossil words, or have been
borrowed from other languages or varieties, and they include ... [Moon
lists about 40 such words, in three separate subclasses for
convenience of further analysis].

I've added the nebulous slash between fixed expressions and idioms because an idiom must be a fixed expression: one utilising a peculiar sense of a word / a non-compositional meaning for the expression, or unusual syntax (or both).
The term 'cranberry collocation' is derived from the term 'cranberry morpheme' ('cran', appearing in no other lexeme, being the founder member of the class).
The request for a list of cranberry collocations (or any list) is off-topic.

Is there a term for words that super narrow in usage? I.e. "Figment"

One Answer

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question