I'm thinking about similarly-formed idiomatic constructs like this cluster:
- 'Put up' - (#1) to allow someone to reside, usually in an ad-hoc temporary manner ('He put up John and I put up Mike; it was just for one night.')
- 'Put up' - (#2) to reluctantly tolerate ('We put up with the poor fuel consumption, it's a cheap car with the finance deal.')
- 'Put down' - to kill by euthanasia ('Their pet was put down because she had cancer')
- 'Put in' - to deploy additional resources/humanpower ('The army put in an extra battalion'; 'the staff put in extra hours to meet the deadline')
- 'Put out' - to engage sexually ('he/she/they put out')
I'm intrigued about this kind of phenomenon, where a single root + structure has acquired completely independent/unrelated diverse idiomatic meanings when used with similar modifiers. In this example, all five items are grammatically similar and formed as 'To put' + a direction.
The same phrases all continue to have their non-idiomatic meaning as well.
Is there a name for this in language studies? Are there other good examples? How does such variety arise historically?
(Sorry about the inexact title, I don't know a better way to describe the question or even the best tags for it)
