cli·ché
Look in my face. My name is used-to-was;
I am also called Played-out and Done-to-death,
And It-will-wash-no-more.
– Henry Duff Traill
Not to split hairs or yank your chain and, oh, maybe I’m grasping at straws that’ll break the camel’s back as it’s passing through the eye of a needle, but I wonder –before the wisdom comes – whether the fact that the word cliché (from French printer’s jargon for “stereotype,”) did not come into widespread use in English until the mid-19th century, means that it was at this point in time that we ran out of new and original ideas.
Ask anyone what they think of your new idea, and they’ll tell you it’s been done like dinner. But can nothing good be said of clichés? Are they not the glue that binds us, confirmation of the common elements of human existence?
Some might say that so trite a claim is itself clichéd, water into wine. Water under the bridge that you burned before crossing. Bridge over fish in troubled waters. A small fish in a big pond, and you’ve got bigger ones to fry. Better you should cut bait and put away that barrel and shotgun.
The goal here of course is not to flog a dead horse, which you should never change in midstream, even if it is stubborn as a mule – like that time you led it to water but could not make it drink like a fish. Again with the fine kettle of fish calling the pot black as the ace of spades (referred to henceforth as “a spade”).
(Well, actually, you probably shouldn’t be riding that horse in a stream anyway, what with it being dead and all.)
Fact of the matter is, the universally acknowledged truth of clichés unites us. And united we stand and the truth, as we all know, is what’s going to set us free. Like the best things in life. Free as birds of a feather that flock together. And better you should have one of those in the hand than two terms of Bush. But that’s a whole other can of worms that not even a ten-foot pole would induce me to touch.
That said, clichés in book reviews really get my goat.
(The latter courtesy of the systematically terrific, and never clichéd, literary saloon.)
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Comment
- You’re killing me, here.
— Sean Dec 6, 3:53pm # - Clichés are the lazy communicator’s best friend.
— LintHuman Dec 6, 3:58pm # - One good turn of the screw deserves another stitch in time waits for no man is an island. Quick as a button a nod’s as good as a wink in the kingdom of the blind.
Crepuscular susurrus.
— vernaculo Dec 7, 5:44am # - You’ve really let the cat out of the bag amongst the pigeons. We best seize the nettle by the horns and clean up our act. It’s time to wake up and smell the music.
— Drew Dec 7, 12:18pm # - When all is said and done, this is, at its core, a searing indictment of the cliché, an epoch-making exposé of the hackneyed, a coruscating condemnation of the commonplace, but one that is also very, very funny. My condolences to your goat.
— misteraitch Dec 7, 4:18pm # - Life is a cliché.
— Sergej Dec 8, 7:15pm # - “But can nothing good be said of clichés?”
I have a kind word for our old friend the cliché. Clichés compress ideas into effective and interesting nuggets, which is why we repeat them so often. “Feeling like a fish out of water” is a good image that communicates well, so everyone adopted it (the expression, not the fish, because fish are nice but it’s illegal to adopt a fish unless maybe you live in Canada).
Of course, if you’re looking for original wordery, you don’t want to read (and certainly don’t want to write) the millionth instance of “feeling like a fish out of water,” because it’s overworked like a big old bow-backed horse that has taken too many passengers around town—hackneyed, another useful image—but the amount of work that it has done for everyone just shows how good the phrase was to begin with.
(Is “hackneyed” hackneyed?)
— eeksypeeksy Dec 10, 5:48pm # - Ok, but real men don’t eat cliches.
— peggy Dec 11, 7:12pm # - hysterically laughing How have I only just discovered your site? I will be back!
— Coquette Dec 29, 5:47pm # - A picture is worth a thousand words.
www.smilinggoat.com/according.html
— Jane Hanstein Cunniffe Jan 12, 8:28pm #
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