Cliché of the Day

What’s on my mind? Words. I wrote about words a couple of days ago, but they’re still on my mind. In an astonishing coincidence, I’m using them now!

When I was a fetching lass in crinolines and lace, tending my goat herd while singing: “The hills are alive …!” (Oh, dear ... That was someone else), I referred to stuff that was cool as “Mint!” Fifty years later, “mint” is dead and “cool” (pronounced “Kew-wel!”) is hot.

Words change - often very fast. I once heard a senator say “move the goal posts” when those words were newly crafted. I thought she was a genius. She is, but not because of those three words, which (I’m always the last to know) were already a cliché. In the same breath, she said: “level playing field.” 

“Wo-o-w!” I thought. Once again, I’m always the last to know.

It turned out the entire English-speaking world was saying “level playing field” - including people on the prairies and the plains, where every field is flatter than my Uncle Stanley’s jokes. The expression is now out of vogue, but tuck it into the back of your linguistic closet because - like that tatty old fur coat you used to wear, it may come back. 

I’m immediately suspicious when someone says: “To be honest ...” Was s/he lying before? Or was s/he relying on a cliché? 

When we aren’t falling into clichés, we’re messing with their spelling: “Yet doe I feare thy Nature. It is too full o’ th’ Milke of humane kindnesse.” 

That’s Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, kvetching that the Laird’s a softie. Today, she’d say: “Get with the program!”  Ooops! That was in the ’70s and ’80s. 

It’s comforting to know “the milk of human kindness” remains in the language 412 years later. That’s one thing about Shakespeare ... His work was loaded with clichés. 

As one writer to another ... If your work comes trippingly to the brain, take a break. You may be writing in clichés. I offer that advice without self-aggrandizement, but through the milk of human kindness.

© Nicole Parton, 2019