How is formed the adjective fettleibig (obese)? It may seem an evident derivate from fett (fat) and Leib
(body); however, the NP fetter Leib is as seldom as the adjective is frequent: this sounds paradoxical.
In this contribution, a new way of explaining the formation of this adjective is explored: fettleibig
appears as a subsistance of a in past times rich -leibig-paradigm. Therefore, in a synchronic view, this
adjective is not explained as a derivate, although it remains mainly transparent.
German academic language contains far more phrasemes than it used to be assumed. Apart from specialist expressions, there are many collocations, idioms and pragmatic phrasemes, which perform a number of textual functions. Scientific discourse has received an increased interest lately, however, no study of body-part phrasemes in academic language has been conducted. This paper presents an analysis of occurrence of phrasemes with the component “eye” in a specially created corpus of German academic texts in such branches as: linguistics, literary studies, foreign language teaching, and medicine. The paper approaches the following questions: Are such phrasemes used in scientifi c discourse and, if so, in which branches of science? What are the purposes of their use? Which phrasemes are favoured in all the analysed branches?