The paper deals with V. Brusov’s use of idioms, collocations, gesture nominations, as well as the original phrases coined by the author. Emphasis is put on somatic idioms and orientation metaphors. The Russian National Corpus shows that while the author tends to use idioms and collocations in his prose more frequently, it is poetry where he modifies them. In the conclusion, the paper provides an explanation to this based on both phraseology and literature studies.