This investigation aims at tracking the cognitive route for meaning construction followed by English-speaking Brazilians when they face idiomatic expressions in English. Cognitive processes proposed by Langacker (1987, 1990, 1991, 1999, 2000), such as entrenchment - labeled routinization or automatization, - selection, abstraction and perspectivation provide theoretical ground for the present study. Basic and very general psychological phenomena that are essential to language are addressed. This qualitative research involved the tape-recording of interviews - Think aloud protocol - with 9 Brazilians. Results have shown what seems to be an inventory of resources related to the basic cognitive operations activated in meaning construction.