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The Mavens' Word of the Day

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February 26, 1998

clichs and idioms


George Tamayo writes:
What is the real difference between an idiom and a clich?
Idioms and clichs are two different things, and while idioms can be clichs
and clichs can be idioms, they should be kept distinct.
An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual
grammatical rules of a language or from the usual meanings of the
expression's constituent elements. For example, the expression kick the
bucket meaning 'to die' has nothing to do with kicking or buckets, but the
entire expression has a set meaning that is familiar to most people. (And no, I
don't know the origin of that phrase, so don't ask.) Idioms can be analyzed in
regard to how idiomatic they are, and there is not necessarily agreement about
whether or not something is an idiom. The usage writer E. Ward Gilman has
observed that the word "idiom" is usually positive, and people use "idiom" to
refer to expressions that they approve of but that are otherwise problematic.
A clich is a word or phrase that has been overused to the point of having lost
its freshness or vigor. A clich can be a fashionable phrase ("at the end of the
day..."), a proverb ("don't count your chickens..."), a simile ("strong as an
ox"), or a single word ("Whatever."). The word clich is almost always
pejorative, and people are told to avoid them ("Avoid clichs like the plague,"
as one self-referential joke has it). An idiom can be a clich--in fact, it's likely
that many idioms will be somewhat clichd--but it does not have to be; and
clichs are by no means always idioms.
Aside from the most general, always applicable advice--"use your judgment
when you write," and the like--one can't be too specific about how to use
clichs and idioms. For clichs, on the one hand, to overuse that expression,
one should try to avoid hackneyed language; on the other, words and phrases
become popular for a reason, and judicious use of them should not be entirely
discouraged. Idioms that are not clichs will rarely bother anyone, as long as
the meaning of the idiom is not obscure.
The word clich is a borrowing from French, where it refers to a stereotype
printing plate; compare, semantically, the words stereotype and boilerplate.
It is first found in the language sense in the 1890s. The word idiom is a
08/01/2013 18:58

The Mavens' Word of the Day

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sixteenth-century borrowing from Latin, from Greek, meaning 'specific


property; peculiarity'.

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08/01/2013 18:58

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