The Cliche

А с l i с h e is generally defined as an expression that has become
hackneyed and trite. As Random House Dictionary has it, "a cliche
... has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long over-use..."

¹ Потебня А. А. Из записок по теории словесности. Харьков, 1905, с. 355.

² See «Вопросы языкознания», 1953, № 1, с. 16.

This definition lacks one point that should be emphasized; that is,
a cliche strives after originality, whereas it has lost the aesthetic gene-
rating power it once had. There is always a contradiction between what

is aimed at and what is actually attained. Examples of real cliches
are 'rosy dreams of youth', 'the patter of little feet', 'deceptively simple'.
Definitions taken from various dictionaries show that cliche is a
derogatory term and it is therefore necessary to avoid anything that
may be called by that name. But the fact is that most of the widely
recognized word-combinations which have been adopted by the language
are unjustly classified as cliches. The aversion for cliches has gone so
far that most of the lexical units based on simile (see p. 167) are branded
as cliches. In an interesting article entitled "Great Cliche Debate" pub-
lished in the New York Times Magazine¹ we can read the pros and cons
concerning cliches. The article is revealing on one main point. It illu-
strates the fact that an uncertain or vague term will lead to various
and even conflicting interpretations of the idea embodied in the term.
What, indeed, do the words 'stereotyped', 'hackneyed', 'trite' convey
to the mind? First of all they indicate that the phrase is in common use.
Is this a demerit? Not at all. On the contrary: something common,
habitual, devoid of novelty is the only admissible expression in some
types of communications. In the article just mentioned one of the deba-
tors objects to the phrase 'Jack-of-all-trades' and suggests that it should
be "one who can turn his hand to any (or to many kinds of) work." His
opponent naturally rejects the substitute on the grounds that 'Jack of
all trades' may, as he says, have long ceased to be vivid or original,
but his substitute never was. And it is fourteen words instead of four.
"Determine to avoid cliches at all costs and you are almost certain to
be led into gobbledygook."²

Debates of this kind proceed from a grossly mistaken notion that the

term 'cliche' is used to denote all stable word-combinations, whereas it
was coined to denote word-combinations which have long lost their
novelty and become trite, but which are used as if they were fresh and
original and so have become irritating to people who are sensitive to the
language they hear and read. What is familiar should not be given a
derogatory label. On the contrary, if it has become familiar, that means
it has won general recognition and by iteration has been accepted as a
unit of the language.

But the process of being acknowledged as a unit of language is slow.
It is next to impossible to foretell what may be accepted as a unit of
the language and what may be rejected and cast away as being unfit,
inappropriate, alien to the internal laws of the language, or failing to
meet the demand of the language community for stable word-combina-
tions to designate new notions. Hence the two conflicting ideas: language
should always be fresh, vigorous and expressive, and, on the other hand,
language, as a common tool for intercommunication, should make use

¹ August 31, 1958.

² Ibid.

of units that are easily understood and which require little or no effort
to convey the idea and to grasp it.

R. D. Altick in his "Preface to Critical Reading"' condemns every
word sequence in which what follows can easily be predicted from what
precedes.

"When does an expression become a cliche? There can be no de-
finite answer, because what is trite to one person may still be fresh
to another. But a great many expressions are universally understood
to be so threadbare as to be useless except in the most casual dis-
course... A good practical test is this: If, when you are listening to
a speaker, you can accurately anticipate what he is going to say
next, he is pretty certainly using cliches, otherwise he would be
constantly surprising you."¹

Then he gives examples, like We are gathered here to-day to mourn
('the untimely death') of our beloved leader...; Words are inadequate
('to express the grief that is in our hearts').

"Similarly when you read," he goes on, "if one word almost in-
evitably invites another, if you can read half of the words and know
pretty certainly what the other are, you are reading cliches."

And then again come illustrations, like We watched the flames ('lick-
ing') at the side of the building. A pall ('of smoke') hung thick over the
neighbourhood...; He heard a dull ('thud') which was followed by an omi-
nous ('silence').²

This passage shows that the author has been led into the erroneous
notion that everything that is predictable is a cliche. He is confusing
useful word-combinations circulating in speech as members of the word-
stock of the language with what claims to be genuine, original and
vigorous. All word-combinations that do not surprise are labelled as
cliches. If we agree with such an understanding of the term, we must
admit that the following stable and necessary word-combinations used
in newspaper language must be viewed as cliches: 'effective guarantees',
'immediate issues' 'the whip and carrot policy', 'statement of policy',
'to maintain some equilibrium between reliable sources', 'buffer zone',
'he laid it down equally clearly that...' and so on.

R. D. Altick thus denounces as cliches such verb- and noun-phrases
as 'to live to a ripe old age', 'to grow by leaps and bounds', 'to withstand
the test of time', 'to let bygones be bygones', 'to be unable to see the wood
for the trees', 'to upset the apple-cart', 'to have an ace up one's sleeve'.
And finally he rejects such word-combinations as 'the full flush of vic-
tory', 'the patter of rain', 'part and parcel', 'a diamond in the rough'
and the like on the grounds that they have outlasted their freshness.³

In his protest against hackneyed phrases, Altick has gone so far as
to declare that people have adopted phrases like 'clock-work precision',

¹ Altick, R.D. Preface to Critical Reading. Holt, N. Y., 1956, p. 100.

² Ibid.
³ Ibid.

'tight-lipped (or stony) silence', 'crushing defeat', 'bumper-to-bumper
traffic', 'sky-rocketing costs' and the like "... as a way of evading their
obligation to make their own language."¹

Of course, if instead of making use of the existing means of communi-
cation, i.e. the language of the community, people are to coin "their
own language," then Altick is right. But nobody would ever think such
an idea either sound or reasonable. The set expressions of a language
are 'part and parcel' of the vocabulary of the language and cannot be
dispensed with by merely labelling them cliches.

However, at every period in the development of a language, there
аppear strange combinations of words which arouse suspicion as to their meaning and connotation. Many of the new-born word-combinations
in modern English, both in their American and British variants, have
been made fun of because their meaning is still obscure, and therefore
they are used rattier loosely. Recently in the New York Times such cli-
ches_as 'speaking realization', 'growing awareness', 'rising expectations',
'to think unthinkable thoughts' and others were wittily criticized by a
journalist who showed that ordinary rank-and-file American people do
not understand these new word-combinations, just as they fail to un-
derstand certain neologisms, as opt (= to make a choice), and revived
words, as deem (= to consider, to believe to be) and others and reject
them or use them wrongly.

But as history has proved, the protest of too-zealous purists often
fails to bar the way to all kinds of innovations into standard English.
Illustrative in this respect is the protest made by Byron in his "Don
Juan":

"...'free to confess' —(whence comes this phrase?
Is't English? No—'tis only parliamentary)."

and also:

"A strange coincidence to use a phrase

By which such things are settled nowadays."

or:

"The march of Science (How delightful these cliches are!)..."

(Aldington)

Byron, being very sensitive to the aesthetic aspect of his native
language, could not help observing the triteness of the phrases he com-
ments on, but at the same time he accepts them as ready-made units.
Language has its strength and its weaknesses. A linguistic scholar must
be equipped with methods of stylistic analysis to ascertain the writer's
aim, the situation in which the communication takes place and possibly
the impact on the reader, to decide whether or not a phrase is a cliche or
"the right word in the right place". If he does not take into consideration
all the properties of the given word or word-combination, the intricacies
of language units may become a trap for him.

¹ Ibid.

Men-of-letters, if they are real artists, use the stock of expressive
phrases contained in the language naturally and easily, and well-known
phrases never produce the impression of being cliches.

Proverbs and Sayings

Proverbs and sayings are facts of language. They are collected in
dictionaries. There are special dictionaries of proverbs and sayings. It is
impossible to arrange proverbs and sayings in a form that would present
"a pattern even though they have some typical features by. which it is
possible to determine whether or not we are dealing with one. These
typical features are: rhythm, sometimes rhyme and/or alliteration-
Rut the most characteristic feature of a proverb or a saying lies not
in its formal linguistic expression, but in the content-form of the utter-
ance. As is known, a proverb or a saying is a peculiar mode of utterance
which is mainly characterized by its brevity. The utterance itself, taken
at its face value, presents a pattern which can be successfully used for
other utterances. The peculiarity of the use of a proverb lies in the fact
that the actual wording becomes a pattern which needs no new wording
to suggest extensions of meaning which are contextual. In other words,
a proverb presupposes a simultaneous application of two meanings:
the face-value or primary meaning, and an extended meaning drawn
from the context, but bridled by the face-value meaning. In other words,
the proverb itself becomes a vessel into which new content is poured.
The actual wording of a proverb, its primary meaning, narrows the
field of possible extensions of meaning, i.e. the filling up of the form.
That is why we may regard the proverb as a pattern of thought. So it is
in every other case at any other level of linguistic research. Abstract
formulas offer a wider range of possible applications to practical pur-
poses than concrete words, though they have the same purpose.

Almost every good writer will make use of language idioms, by-
phrases and proverbs. As Gorki has it, they are the natural ways in which
speech develops.

Proverbs and sayings have certain purely linguistic features which
must always be taken into account in order to distinguish them from
ordinary sentences. Proverbs are brief statements showing in condensed

form the accumulated life experience of the community and serving as

conventional practical symbols for abstract ideas. They are usually
didactic and image bearing. Many of them through frequency of repeti-
tion have become polished and wrought into verse-like shape, as in the
following:

"to cut one's coat according to one's cloth."

"Early to bed and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

Brevity in proverbs manifests itself also in the omission of connec-
tives, as in:

"First come, first served."
"Out of sight, out of mind."

But the main feature distinguishing proverbs and savings from or-
dinary utterances remains their semantic aspect. Their literal meaning
is suppressed by what may be termed their transferred meaning. In
other words, one meaning (literal) is the form for another meaning
(transferred) which contains the idea. Proverbs and sayings, if used
appropriately, will never lose their freshness and vigour. The most no-
ticeable thing about the functioning of sayings, proverbs and catch-
phrases is that they may be handled not in their fixed form (the tradi-
tional model) but with modifications. These modifications, however,
will never break away from the invariants to such a degree that the cor-
relation between the invariant model or a word-combination and its
variant ceases to be perceived by the reader. The predictability of a
variant of a word-combination is lower in comparison with its invariant.
Therefore the use of such a unit in a modified form will always arrest
our attention, causing a much closer examination of the wording of
the utterance in order to get at the idea. Thus, the proverb 'all is not
gold that glitters' appears in Byron's "Don Juan" in the following form
and environment where at first the meaning may seem obscure:

"How all the needy honourable misters,

Each out-at-elbow peer or desperate dandy,

The watchful mothers, and the careful sisters

(Who, by the by, when clever, are more handy

At making matches where "t'is gold that glisters"¹
Than their he relatives), like flies o'er candy

Buzz round the Fortune with their busy battery,

To turn her head with waltzing and with flattery."

Out of the well-known proverb Byron builds a periphrasis, the mean-
ing of which is deciphered two lines below: 'the Fortune', that is, 'a mar-
riageable heiress').

It has already been pointed out that Byron is fond of playing with
stable word-combinations, sometimes injecting new vigour into the com-
ponents, sometimes entirely disregarding the semantic unity of the com-
bination. In the following lines, for instance, each word of the phrase
safe and sound gets its full meaning.

"I leave Don Juan for the present, safe —

Not sound, poor fellow, but severely wounded;"

The proverb Hell is paved with good intentions and the set expres-
sion to mean well are used by Byron in a peculiar way, thus making the
reader re-appraise the hackneyed phrases.

"........................................................ if he warr'd

Or loved, it was with what we call the best

Intentions, which form all mankind's trump card,
To be produced when brought up to the test.

The statesman, hero, harlot, lawyer—ward
Off each attack, when people are in quest

¹ the archaic form of glitters

Of their designs, by saying they meant well.
'Tis pity that such meaning should pave hell."

The stylistic effect produced by such uses of proverbs and sayings
is the result of a twofold application of language means, which, as has
already been emphasized, is an indispensable condition for the appearance
of all stylistic devices. The modified form of the proverb is perceived
against the background of the fixed form, thus enlivening the latter.
Sometimes this injection of new vigour into the proverb causes a slight
semantic re-evaluation of its generally accepted meaning. When a prov-
erb is used in its unaltered form it can be qualified as an expressive
means (EM) of the language; when used in a modified variant it assumes
the one of the features of an SD, it acquires a stylistic meaning, though
not becoming an SD.

We shall take only a few of the numerous examples of the stylistic
use of proverbs and sayings to illustrate the possible ways of decomposing
the units in order simply to suggest the idea behind them:

"Come!" he said, "milk's spilt." (Galsworthy) (from 'It is no use
crying over spilt milk!').

"But to all that moving experience there had been a shadow
(a dark lining to the silver cloud), insistent and plain, which discon-
certed her." (Maugham) (from 'Every cloud has a silver lining').

"We were dashed uncomfortable in the frying-pan, but we should
have been a damned sight worse off in the fire." (Maugham) (from
'Out of the frying-pan into the fire').

"You know which side the law's buttered." (Galsworthy) (from
'His bread is buttered on both sides').

This device is used not only in the belles-lettres style. Here are some
instances from newspapers and magazines illustrating the stylistic use
of proverbs, sayings and other word-combinations:

"...and whether the Ministry of Economic Warfare is being all-
owed enough financial rope to do its worst." (from 'Give a thief
rope enough and he'll hang himself).

"The waters will remain sufficiently troubled for somebody's
fishing to be profitable." (Economist) (from ^lIt is good fishing in
troubled waters').

A newspaper editorial once had the following headline:

"Proof of the Pudding" (from 'The proof of the pudding is in the
eating').

Here is a recast of a well-known proverb used by an advertizing agency:

"Early to bed and early to rise
No use—unless you advertize"
(from 'Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise').

Notice this recast by Lewis Carroll of a well-known saying:¹

"Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of them-
selves."