Cliche

CLICHE:  (noun) a commonplace or trite expression  .  banality  .  a phrase or opinion that is overused

I know you don’t wake up every morning with the word cliche on your mind, and perhaps the closest some of us  have come to thinking about the word may have been that time back in high school when an overzealous English teacher underlined a phrase in one of our essays and wrote “cliche” in the margin, leaving us wondering what a cliche was.

Cliches are expressions that were once new and fresh but have been used so often and so extensively that they have lost their impact and are now empty of meaning,  and some people may even find them irritating.  Writers and public speakers are always  warned to avoid using them. Shun them like the plague. There’s a cliche for you.

Here is a list  of some popular cliches:

light as a feather                                          lived happily  ever after
it hit me like a thunderbolt                       it’s raining cats and dogs
he’s a diamond in the rough                     at this point in time
don’t judge a book by its cover                 it’s as cold as ice
every cloud has a silver lining                  that’s a knee-jerk reaction

Have you been guilty of using any of the cliches above? Time to quit.  Maybe you know of some that aren’t on the list and wouldn’t mind sharing them.

If you look hard at the list, you’ll see that these are really good images, actual figures of speech. The problem is we got too much of a good thing—another cliche here.  The phrases lost their luster. My college professor in Survey of European History class once had us laughing  when, in relating  an anecdote,  instead of saying, “I didn’t know the man from  Adam,” he said, “I didn’t know the man  from. . .” then paused and with an impish smile said, “Eve.”  He was trying to avoid  using the cliche “didn’t know him from Adam,” and we found the switch hilarious.

Some of our cliches have good lineage. Several come from Shakespeare.  “All that glitters is not gold” is from The Merchant of Venice, and “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” is from Romeo and Juliet. They’re still effective when read in the context of the plays.  We have lifted a number of sayings  from the Bible and  made them into cliches also. For instance, “To everything there is a season” is from Ecclesiastes 3:1. “By the skin of my teeth,” which I heard an interviewee use on NPR this morning, is from Job 19:20. Abraham Lincoln made Jesus’ words in Matthew 12:25–“A house divided against itself cannot stand”– powerfully appealing, but it resulted in  a cliche.  Some popular beliefs  have evolved into  cliches that have been attributed  to the Bible, but they are not found in holy writ.  “God helps those who help themselves” and “Cleanliness is next to godliness” are not at all biblical, even though some people preface them with “As the Bible says.”

Cliches are true and make sense, as “All that glitters is not gold” illustrates. Scammers make this one true in every way.  But  many people, especially English teachers, don’t like cliches because  they admire originality and creativity, qualities we appreciate when we read a good book or listen to a captivating speaker. The Chinese, however, are said to like cliches. Imagine that! The explanation given is that they prize tradition rather than newness and  individualism, which Westerners  cherish. For the Chinese, oft-repeated words and phrases serve to  reinforce their societal values. Not so with Westerners, whose values are forever changing. In Western culture, people are always looking to try something new.

It is possible that a person’s life can become a cliche–hum-drum and monotonous, lacking freshness.  To make a change, you don’t have to be like the people that the Apostle Paul encountered in Athens on his Third Missionary Journey.  They hung out daily in the town square, eager for  the latest news, craving whatever was different.  But if life for you has become a little like a cliche,  it may be time to branch out into a creative and  stimulating activity to bring freshness and enjoyment  to your experience.

Blessings,

Judith

*****

“Let’s have some new cliches.”
Samuel Goldwyn