I like clichés.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

“The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.”

Yeah, whatever Dalí.

I like clichéd phrases. I think they are just misunderstood idioms.

The reason is that they can convey ideas in a much more concise and accurate way than would be possible without them. I challenge any cliché-haters out there to express the meaning behind these phrases in a more elegant way: 1. This too shall pass. 2. Haste makes waste. 3. All that glitters is not gold. 4. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Those are just a few of my favorite clichés. The point is that all clichés have become widely used precisely because they are effective ways to communicate a particular emotion or idea that would be otherwise difficult to put into words.

True, we could all come up with our own beautiful analogies and symbols, but not everyone is a poet, and I think that’s okay.

Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong. I’m not sure if I should put this in IMHO or MPSIMS because on one hand alternate opinions are welcome, but on the other hand, it is certainly mundane and pointless.

2

I avoid cliches like the plague.

3

I think they are as popular as a red haired step child.

4

I think judicious use of cliché can enrich conversation - for example, when talking to a customer about a scenario where deleting a file would be irrevocable, I chose to say “If you do that, it will be gone - completely gone - one with the snows of yesteryear”.

I don’t suppose it matters much, but I think repeating a poetic turn of phrase is not a crime.

5

Must be really cool to live somewhere that the works of Villon are a mere cliché.

6

Dali is right, but it is that “possibly” that makes him right.

Those aren’t clichés, they are proverbs. When people use them, it is normally with a keen awareness that they are well known and oft repeated, and their intended effect generally relies on the fact that they are well known, and that people know they are.

Cliché is not just the repetition of well worn, even overused, phrases, it is the use of them without apparent awareness of (or perhaps without apparent care for) their unoriginality, as if the speaker or writer thinks they have invented them, or at least that they are reasonably fresh, new, and striking.

But yes, I agree with this. If someone is not trying to pass themselves off of a brilliant and original stylist, the occasional cliché does no harm, and can often be the most clear and succinct way of getting something over. If it wasn’t good, it would never have become a cliché in the first place. Even so, however, if someone uses too many clichés it can get very irritating.

7

False. Some things that glitter are not gold, but some are.

8

That’s what he said.

9

I, for one, am shocked and appalled.

10

Yes, of course. It’s not the cliché itself, but when someone uses it without recognizing that it’s a cliché.

I personally think clichés can be hilarious, but I’m not talking of the verbal type, but rather the non-verbal type–situational clichés–because I like to see how people respond to them. Once, when I was in high school (long before 9-11), I went to the airport to meet a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a while. I decided to “play a cliché” on him – and by this I specifically do NOT mean just play a prank, which, by itself, is a lower species of humor.

I put on a realistic disguise, using professional stage make-up – slight beard, dyed hair, glasses, etc. – and then got a brief case, which I handcuffed to my wrist. Inside the brief case I put some run-of-the-mill electronic schematics, which to an untrained eye looked like they could represent some kind of sophisticated technology.

IOW, it was the CLASSIC movie cliché of the international spy.

The idea was to walk up to my friend as he got off the plane, unlock the handcuff, handcuff the briefcase onto him, then walk away. I wanted to observe the cognitive dissonance that my friend would experience as he became caught up in something that couldn’t be real (because it was such a cliché), and yet was actually happening. In fact, my sole interest in doing this derived from the cliché dimension of the whole thing.

Of course, even in those pre 9-11 days, security wouldn’t let me through, because I refused to uncuff the briefcase and put it on the x-ray conveyor belt, saying, “I am not authorized to separate myself from from these important documents.” I guess I was taking the cliché too seriously.

11

All that glisters is not gold. Merchant of Venice

12

I see the distinction.

But how can one show others that they are using the cliché mindfully?

In fact, I disagreed with an English professor about this point, which is why I posted the topic. We did an activity where other students’ papers were put on the board for everyone to comment on. A guy had the phrase “dog-eat-dog world” in there, and the professor said it’s a bad idea to use clichéd phrases in a paper.

I really think “dog-eat-dog world” is a great little phrase. How else can you really describe the cut-throat nature of society in four words or fewer? Plus, it’s just vivid. You can’t help but imagine people cutting into one another like viscous dogs.

So yeah, I guess that’s my point. I don’t really see the distinction between idiom and cliché. I think they’re both effective. The only time when they aren’t is when people forget the original phrase (doggy-dog world) or meaning. But that can happen with single words too (literally!) so I don’t really see why clichés need to be singled out.

guizot - Wow, what a funny story.
Did you eventually meet your friend outside the airport? What did he think about your costume?

13

That’s a meme we need to disseminate.

14

You raise an important question, with broader implications in writing pedagogy, and which professors like that probably can’t answer: At what point does an idiom—or any phrase—become a “cliché”? A lot of writing pedagogy is presented as though the criteria for “good” writing were somehow naturally derived—as though stylistic norms were not, in fact, what they really are: social constructions that have evolved from the preferences of particular arbiters. One adopts the ability to write “well” by way of a long process of socialization to certain standards, and those standards are not innate or universal, nor are they transparently self-evident to developing writers, though professors like the one you mention seem to think so.

Well, that became almost irrelevant, because the security crew (who at that time at Lindbergh Field were the Harbor Police, being pre-TSA) told me to leave the briefcase in my car if I wanted to get in. But as I was walking toward the parking lot, they apprehended me, and took me into their back room. When they realized I was wearing a disguise, checked my ID, and saw my age, they insisted that that I admit the whole thing was some kind of fraternity joke. I was so into the cliché, though, that I refused to do that, saying only that “McPherson” was the person who’d sent me, and nothing else. The regular officers thought the whole thing was funny, but their sergeant didn’t, (because I wouldn’t admit to a joke), and to teach me a lesson, he called in the FBI, because what I had in the briefcase was—in his exact words-- “three-fifths of a bomb”— a phrase which he used over and over, apparently in an attempt to invoke some solemnity into the situation. When the FBI agent came in he was even more pissed off, because he’d been taken off of a kidnapping case to deal with what was obviously a joke. Finally they tracked down my father, who was the most pissed off of all, and I had to admit there was no “McPherson,” and that it was indeed a joke. However, the Harbor Police officers, when they made their report, had to take a Polaroid picture of me for the record, and they let me keep the disguise on for it, because they admired its convincing effect. Boy–recalling all this, I have to marvel at how much things really have changed since 9-11.

15

I once got curious how the illogical phrase got going. It goes back to a Latin original and the original clearly said, "Not all that glitters [or glistens or glistens, it is a matter of translation] is gold. Clear and logical. How it got twisted is not explained.

Another illogical one is, “You cannot have your cake and eat it too.” Even the Unabomber understood that.

That said, I agree with the OP. A good cliche often expresses things very succinctly.

16

The problem with cliches is that they’re common as dirt, but you don’t want your writing to become chock full of them. Obviously when it comes to getting rid of cliches, though, you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Trying to eliminate every old chestnut or stock phrase from your vocabulary is just a bridge too far.

17

Whatever maintains the buoyancy of your watercraft.
mmm

18

you will find you need cliches less if you think outside the box.

19

Have you ever seen a dog eat a dog?

How about:
It’s a savage world.
It’s a brutal world.

20

I can take 'em or leave 'em-usually they roll off me like water off a duck’s back.