Cliché (from French, imitative) refers to:

• an overused phrase or expression, or the idea expressed by it;
• a situation, theme or characterization which has become common;
• a thing (as a style of clothing) that has become overly familiar or commonplace. (See Cliché.)

Usually the term refers to something which both had (or aimed to have) freshness and force but whose freshness and force are lost through overuse. Thus the expression in other words, though often used, is not a cliché; it never had originality or forceful meaning.

Contents

1 Cliché expressions and their meanings 2 Cliché expressions in résumés/curriculum vitae 3 Clichés in literature 4 Clichés in business & advertising 5 Cliché humor 6 Clichés in film and television 6.1 Cartoons 6.2 Anime 6.3 Sport 6.4 Video games 7 Clichés on the Internet 8 Clichés in theater 9 Clichés in sports 10 Related topics 11 External links

Cliché expressions and their meanings

• Avoid _____ like the plague.
• At the end of the day, ... - In summary, ...
• The bottom line is ... - In summary, ... (a term used in business, indicating a profit or loss)
• Can't see your nose in front of your face - It's really hard to see.
• Cat got your tongue? - Why haven't you been talking?
• The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence - Anything someone else has seems better.
• Get to the calf through the cow - The best way to get to the girl is through her mother.
• Give up the ghost - to die, expire or otherwise come to an end
• Killing two birds with one stone - Completing two tasks with one process.
• Last but not least...
• Let me bounce this off of you... - To present a scenario or idea for the purpose of receiving feedback or critique
• On the same page - Two or more parties understand a situation the same way and are operating accordingly.
• Only the tip of the iceberg
• Pot calling the kettle black - When a person criticizes another for behaviours which they themselves exhibit as well
• Putting the cart before the horse - To come to a conclusion without suitably indicative evidence, or also trying to skip steps in a process or task
• Reading between the lines - Inferring information.
• Six of one, half-a-dozen of another - The result is the same in either case.
• What is coming down the pike... (or '...down the pipe') - events or happenings expected to come to pass in the near future.
• What's good for the goose is good for the gander - If something is good for one person, it follows that it's good for everyone.
• What goes around comes around - If you do something good (bad), good (bad) things will happen to you.
• Can't _____ oneself out of wet a paper bag
• A little bit from column A, a little bit from column B - An answer to an either/or question implying that both answers are correct.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Originally a song of protest against the perceived "white media" by Gil-Scott Heron, the phrase is now casually bandied about on pundit blogs and MTV .
• The more things change, the more they stay the same. - Despite the appearance of change, there is little fundamental difference between the past and the present.
• This is not your father's ____. - Despite similarities, there is a fundamental difference between the past and the present subject.
• Touch base - to briefly communicate with someone in order to allow each to assure each party that a situation or project is proceeding as all desire.
• Where there's smoke, there's fire. - If there seems to be trouble, then there is trouble.

Cliché expressions in résumés/curriculum vitae

Overly-used phrases to describe one's skills to potential employers. Taken from a survey of 160,000 resumes. [1] (http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/07/10/BUGGF7JA1D1.DTL) These expressions are criticised for being too vague to be of any use.

• "(I have good) communication skills" - 12.6 percent of surveyed résumés.
• "(I am a) team player" - 7.2 percent
• "(I have good) organizational skills" - 5.5 percent

Clichés in literature

• It was a dark and stormy night. — Opening line of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's novel Paul Clifford (1830). Also used by the comic strip character Snoopy as he was writing fiction in Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.

This phrase is also used as the title of collections of entries from the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest of prospective opening lines for bad novels. This sentence was also the opening line of Madeleine L'Engle's classic children's fantasy novel, A Wrinkle in Time (1960).

• Suddenly...
• And they lived happily ever after.
• Princess and dragon tales.

Clichés in business & advertising

• For all your ____ needs.
• And much, much more!
• For only ___ easy payments of $____!
• But wait! Order now and you also get ___!

Cliché humor

• A person makes a painting which gets messed up (by pets or weather), making it look disorderly with a lot of stains, and yet manages to become popular as abstract art.
• An alien invader who lands on Earth, causing a lot of mess and mischief, but is revealed as an alien child who gets taken back by his parents at the end.
• Whenever a character goes fishing, he will eventually catch any of the following as result of "error": a can, a boot, or a tire, and in some cases, a book of clichés.

Clichés in film and television

See List of film and television clichés by general subject and List of movie clichés by genre

Cartoons

• Cartoon characters can fall from any height, walk on thin air until they look down, be hit with any object, be burned, have their bodies mangled and twisted into any shape, and have every tooth in their mouth knocked out and seconds later appear without any sign of any injury (see Chuck Jones or Tex Avery cartoons).
• A villain will usually pretend to give up and/or turn good in order to lead the naive and trusting good guys into a trap.
• If the main character is a kid, the father is usually depicted as senile or lacking competence (sometimes both parents).
• Cartoon characters almost always wear the exact same clothing all the time. This is often parodied (by some cartoons themselves) showing the inside of their closets actually having several identical sets of clothing. This is also the case with some non-animated cartoon characters (such as Ernest P. Worrell).
• All cartoon characters are capable of producing a match from thin air than can be lit on any surface. When they do so, they usually stumble on a "surprise" sight, such as loads of explosives.
• When a bomb goes off in a cartoon character's face, they usually are blackened by the ashes, but are otherwise unharmed.
• A cartoon character who is suddenly scared (or who falls) will lose his hair which is revealed as a wig and him/her as bald.
• Cats are usually stupid and villainous while dog and mice are smart and good (see Tom and Jerry).
• Any object is found to be conveniently located within arm's reach upon its mention.

Anime

• Anime male heroes almost always have more or less spikey hair (or at least a fancy one).
• If an anime character has long white hair, there is a very big chance that he/she is a villain (bigger chance if he/she dresses in black).
• Most anime females are teenagers or adults who are younger than thirty.
• Anime characters all eat and/or like Japanese food, no matter their nationality and culture, even if they live in Middle Age Europe or are outer-space aliens. Same is with sake.
• Sexual excitement causes rapid nosebleed in anime males.
• In anime, main female characters are almost always lousy cooks while younger females or the male heroes cook much better than them.
• If an anime male character wants to sneak/steal at night, his best disguise will be a scarf covering his hair and tied under his nose.
• Westerners and Japanese look just alike in anime. If not, the Westerners are usually more realistically drawn or just have lighter-colored eye pupils. Japanese have a greater array of colors for their hair and eyes.
• In anime romance, the male lead will usually end with the hottest-tempered girl. If the lead is female, she will usually end with the coolest-tempered boy who'd reveal his soft side.
• A crucial moment in an anime battle, for example the punch that wins the fight, is shown from three different angles in slow motion before the attack actually connects.
• Male anime characters, no matter how powerful or skilled they may be in combat, can never avoid getting hit by an angry girl who is romantically involved with him.

Sport

• Sports coaches are usually:
  • Rueful of how an injury cost him/her a pro career (Rodney Dangerfield pokes fun at it in Ladybugs as he kisses up to his boss to get a soccer coaching job), or
  • A has-been athlete, usually drunk (e.g. Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own). Probably a standard set in Brick's character in the Tennessee Williams play and movie Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
• The talented kid who refuses to play will usually have a scene with the coach where they throw a basketball back and forth, speaking only when they have the ball. The athlete will eventually drop the ball and walk away silently (after failing repeatedly or being mocked by his playing mates).
• Underperforming or underdog athletes will come up big when it really matters, despite going against a juggernaught-like team.
• An athlete can easily spot his loved one in a crowd of thousands of people.
• The big final game of the season is always decided on the last play, with the clock running out (or in baseball, with two outs in the bottom of the 9th).
• In any kind of racing competition the villain is more focused on attacking the hero than with winning the race (obviously leading to his doom).

Video games

• Gun bullets are slow, and do extremely little damage while handheld weapons do about thrice damage (except in realistic simulation games).
• In an RPG, the players can search people's homes and take their belongings without them doing anything against it (see Final Fantasy games).
• NPCs who are not enemies tend to just stand there, looking, or walking forward and back.
• It is impossible to run away from a boss.
• If the game is a series, the hero will always have to confront an evil double.
• There are always convenient appliances to help the hero move forward, even in villain hideouts (spoofed by The Lost Vikings).
• A boss always has considerably bigger stamina and is physically bigger than other enemies, even if he/she is a normal person.
• There are always several chances...
• No matter what the initial goal in an RPG is, sooner or later, the heroes will end up having to save the whole world.
• In an RPG, the plot usually begins at the hero's house as he wakes up, or he is sent out on an errand and ends up stumbling upon the plot. That plot usually also involves the hero's village catching on fire. (See Breath of Fire)
• The main protagonist of an RPG is usually always silent, yet other characters seem to think he is talking.
• The RPG hero must collect some sort of artifact, usually crystals, to stop the villain's evil plan (see the first Final Fantasy games). Shortly after gaining the last artifact, the Villians will then steal them all, using them for whatever purpose you were trying to stop them from doing anyway.
• All RPG shopkeepers look alike (see Baldur's Gate).
• In many cases, few of the enemies use projectile weapons, and those that do are very bad shots.
• Caves are bound to be an issue sooner or later, despite how uncommon they are in real life- same for deserts and, to a lesser extent, large factories.
• Any food can recover ridiculous amounts of health.

Clichés on the Internet

• As seen in Photoshop contests on Drew Curtis' Fark.com: Every time you masturbate... God kills a kitten (sometimes called "Cliché Kitty"), Admiral Ackbar ("It's a trap!"), the "Nutsack Squirrel," the "Mustard Man,", Hitler, Nazis, Soviets, Imperial Stormtroopers and many others.
• The All Your Base Are Belong To Us craze
• Mee too! in usenet posts.
• Bert is Evil
• You forgot Poland
• Don't feed the trolls! in usenet posts and forums.
• Leetspeak
• Replacing the letter 's' with a dollar sign ($): (Micro$oft, NA$CAR)

See also: Internet phenomenon

Clichés in theater

• See Tom Stoppard's play "The Real Inspector Hound"

Clichés in sports

• Give it a hundred and ten percent
• Take it one game at a time
• Backs against the wall (especially before any elimination games)
• Swing and a miss
• He shoots, - he scores!
• There's no "I" in a team
• A commanding six-shot lead (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22commanding+six-shot+lead%22) (in reporting golf results).

Related topics

• List of English proverbs
• List of movie clichés by genre
• List of film and television clichés by general subject

External links

• The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Clichés (http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html)
• ClichéSite.com For Cliche Expressions (http://www.clichesite.com/index.asp)
• Peter's Evil Overlord List (http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html)
• Cliché Finder (http://www.westegg.com/cliche/)
• The Book of Clichés (http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/sybev/cliche/), phrases to say in times of trouble
• The Sports Cliché List (http://www.sportscliche.com/)

de:Liste von Klischees