18e. Clichés
The pioneer who first announced that he had “slept like a log” no doubt amused his companions with a fresh, unlikely comparison. Today, however, that comparison is a cliché, a saying that can no longer add emphasis or surprise.
To see just how dully predictable clichés are, put your hand over the right-hand column in the following list and then finish the phrases on the left.
| cool as a | cucumber |
| beat around | the bush |
| blind as a | bat |
| busy as a | bee, beaver |
| crystal | clear |
| dead as a | doornail |
| out of the frying pan and | into the fire |
| light as a | feather |
| like a bull | in a china shop |
| playing with | fire |
| selling like | hotcakes |
| starting out at the bottom | of the ladder |
| water under the | bridge |
| white as a | sheet, ghost |
| avoid clichés like the | plague |
The solution for clichés is simple: Just delete them or rewrite them.
Sometimes you can write around a cliché by adding an element of surprise. One student revised a cliché about butterflies in her stomach like this:
If all of the action in my stomach is caused by butterflies, there must be a horde of them, with horseshoes on.
The image of butterflies wearing horseshoes is fresh and unlikely, not predictable like the original cliché.
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- Word choice > Exercises: 18–6 and 18–7
- Word choice > LearningCurve: Word choice and appropriate language