Real Dictionary

exocentric in American English
designating or of a construction whose syntactic function is different from that of any of its constituents (Ex.: all the way in the sentence “he ran all the way”)
adjective: not having the same syntactic function in the sentence as any one of its immediate constituents In the garden is an exocentric construction, since it does not function in the same way as the noun garden. The noun bittersweet is an exocentric compound, sin

exocentric in British English
adjective: (of a construction) not fulfilling the grammatical role of any of its constituents; as in until last Easter, where the constituents are prepositional, adjectival, and nominal, while the whole construction is adverbial