Markedness, Marking, Markers

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Marking

Marking refers to changing form, and usually refers to the results of wider and regular systems of such change (such as inflection)

It need not be morphological; e.g. you can say that the use and choice of of articles (e.g. the, a) mark an object.

The term Marker usually refers to specific morphemes commonly used in morphemic marking. For example, in English the 's' as a suffix tends to mark plural form.

See also Modification.

Markedness

Confusingly, marked forms can refer to markedness instead.

Markedness refers to a comparison linguistic behaviour as being more irregular than another.

in a sense of just being more specific

e.g. honest (unmarked) vs. dishonest (marked),

be it in the sense of standing out (somewhat related to the idea of idiomacity)

in the sense that the choice draws attention to itself

in a sense of one being low-effort

'unusual' can be a broad term - you could even argue that one aspect of institutionalized phrases is that that combination of words appear with markedly (i.e. unusually) high frequency