To investigate 1) whether there is cross-linguistic influence in the processing of multi-word items (MWIs) in an exclusively L1 task, and 2) whether L1/L2 congruency (i.e., the similarity in form and meaning between L1 and L2) modulates this influence, I compared the processing of one type of MWIs – binomial expressions (knife and fork) – in English-Chinese bilinguals and English monolinguals. The binomial expressions are further classified as L1/L2 congruent (love and hate), English-only (bread and butter), or Chinese-only binomials translated into English (dragon and phoenix). I used a visual lexical decision task to determine whether the first part of a binomial (knife and) would prime the processing of the terminal word of that binomial (fork) compared to the control phrase (spoon and fork), and whether any such priming effect is dependent on the degree of the cross-language overlap, in other words, whether priming occurs for both congruent and incongruent binomials. The following findings emerged. First, unlike L1 monolingual counterparts, bilingual participants did not show a processing advantage for English-only binomials relative to controls. However, bilinguals showed a priming effect for congruent binomials, and the magnitude of this effect was comparable with that observed for monolinguals. This result shows a congruency effect in the processing of L1 binomials by bilinguals. The loss of facilitated processing for English-only binomials in bilinguals compared to monolinguals may be the result of an L1 inhibition effect, because bilinguals need to actively inhibit English to help them learn Chinese (that is presumably weaker than their L1). In contrast, addition of frequencies in L2 may prevent congruent binomials against a loss of facilitated processing. Second, neither bilinguals nor monolinguals showed priming effect for the translated Chinese-only binomials. This suggests that both groups processed the translated Chinese-only binomials in a manner similar to controls, rather than binomials.