Sentence examples similar to phrasal templates from inspiring English sources

Those are uses of a phrasal template, the application of the structure of a famous phrase to a different subject.

I ran this speculation past Ben Zimmer of visualthesaurus.com, who replied: "I think your hunch is correct about the provenance of the 'I don't do X' phrasal template.

"The Cadillac of X" has also survived as a sturdy phrasal template, even if it's now often used with tongue in cheek.

But does the ready acceptance of this "phrasal template" mean we are living in syntax, undermining the rules of order and word relationships in sentence structure on which we base our grammar?

Before that, the O.E.D., in its exhaustive history of do, cites Charles Dickens and other 19th-century writers using the phrase "to do the [adjective like "grand" or "lazy"] thing"; then came a burst of usage in the 1990s of the "I don't do" phrasal template followed by the likes of "nuance" or "small talk" or "ticktock".

Saddam Hussein's "the mother of all battles" was taken up and used for "the mother of all (whatev)." The most heavily used phrasal template comes from the fashion world's "Pink is the new black," which led to "50 is the new 30" and to the outrageous "Sex without condoms is the new engagement ring".

Andy and Angela play Mad Libs, a phrasal template word game where one player prompts another for a list of words to substitute for blanks in a story, usually with funny results.

Phrasal is available on Github.

Gappy Phrasal Alignment by Agreement.

Phrasal etymologists, start your search engines!

The study examined three categories of multi-word verbs (phrasal, prepositional, and phrasal-prepositional verbs) in comparison to free combinations.