“Avoid clichés like the plague!” That’s the tongue-in-cheek advice we get from most writers with good sense. Do you have a favorite cliché? Any that you hate? How about:
- There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
- She was sweating bullets.
- He was burning the candle at both ends.
- I made it by the skin of my teeth
- Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth
- See you later, alligator. After awhile, crocodile.
And what exactly is a cliché? If you’ve written or said a phrase that sounds familiar, it most likely is one. Clichés are sayings that have been overused. They start out brand-new and exciting, but soon lose their fresh imagery and begin to sound old.
Over the holidays I read The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch. It’s a terrific book, but I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard him start Chapter 38:
If at First You Don’t Succeed ….
… TRY, TRY a cliché (Pausch 146)
Pausch goes on to say that the reason clichés are used so often is that they’re usually “right on the money.”
What do you think?