A DICTIONARY OF CLICHÉS Other Partridge titles published by Routledge: A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF SLANG AND UNCONVENTIONAL ENGLISH edited by Paul Beale A DICTIONARY OF CATCH PHRASES A DICTIONARY OF SLANG AND UNCONVENTIONAL ENGLISH edited by Paul Beale ORIGINS: AN ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH THE ROUTLEDGE DICTIONARY OF HISTORICAL SLANG edited by Jacqueline Simpson SHORTER SLANG DICTIONARY by Eric Partridge and Paul Beale; edited by Rosalind Fergusson SHAKESPEARE’S BAWDY foreword by Stanley Wells YOU HAVE A POINT THERE: A GUIDE TO PUNCTUATION AND ITS ALLIES A DICTIONARY OF CLICHÉS WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY By ERIC PARTRIDGE Occidit miseros crambe repetita scriptores Juvenal emendatus. London and New York First published in Great Britain September 1940 2nd Edition January 1941 3rd Edition (Revised) January 1947 4th Edition January 1950 5th Edition and first published as a paperback in 1978 Published in the USA by Routledge . 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk”. © Eric Partridge 1940 , 1941 , 1947 , 1950 , 1978 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publishers, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Partridge, Eric A dictionary of clichés.—5th ed. 1. English Language—Terms and Phrases I. Title 423 ’. 1 PE1689 78–40557 ISBN 0-203-37996-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-38613-2 (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-06555-0 (Print Edition) TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE A.W.STEWART PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY WRITER OF THRILLERS LOVER OF GOOD ENGLISH GRATEFULLY FROM THE AUTHOR WHOM HE CONSIDERABLY HELPED IN THAT EXCELLENT BLOOD SPORT: CLICHÉ-HUNTING CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE TO THE 5TH EDITION ix PREFACE x INTRODUCTION xi A DICTIONARY OF CLICHÉS 1 PREFACE TO THE 5TH EDITION SINCE the latest edition of this book appeared a few years ago, the situation seems to have become worse. As we advance scientifically and technologically, and as standards of living improve, we tend to become lazier and slacker in our attitude towards speech and writing: instead of being more alert and adventurous, we resort more and more to ‘the good old cliché’. Not only in the Press, radio, TV, but also—and not only as a result of their insidious influence—in everyday life, we remain faithful to all the old clichés and adopt the new, foisted on us by politicians and publicists. Only those of us who are concerned to keep the language fresh and vigorous regard, with dismay, the persistence of these well-worn substitutes for thinking and the mindless adoption of new ones. The danger is seen at its clearest when we listen to public figures of undoubted ability and read the works of wellknown writers of every sort—and suddenly we realize how often they bore us by employing a cliché when they could so easily have delighted us with something vivid or, at the least, precise. Among the newer clichés, two stand out from among the ‘things better left unsaid’: in this day and age, which, originally possessing sonority and dignity, now implies mental decrepitude and marks a man for the rest of his life; and its mentally retarded offspring, at this point in time: ‘at present’, or ‘nowadays’ or, usually, the simple ‘now’ would suffice. Notably, the new edition is available as a paperback. And so, besides the general intelligent public, teachers and, our torch-bearers, students will find it much more accessible. PREFACE THAT some such book as this is needed has been indicated, shown, proved to me in several ways and on many occasions: the most important occasion could not be made public without a gross breach of good faith and a sad lack of tact. (A pity; for it was so startling as to be almost indecently convincing.) Having formerly been a graceless sinner in this matter of clichés, I know how useful a dictionary of clichés could be to others. To the clichés I have subjoined a synonym or an explanation only where necessary; but I have in many instances established the etymological or semantic origin, determined the status, and named the author (or work) in whom (or which) the phrase first occurred; to quotation-clichés I have added the context and, sometimes, amplified the quotation. By the extremely border-line cases, I have done my best. A note of authentic (and authenticated) omissions will be gratefully received; to collect clichés is not an easy job—after the first three or four hundred. I gladly thank Professor A.W. Stewart, Mr Wilson Benington, and Mr Allen Walker Read (American clichés) for their assistance in accumulating clichés, but they are not to be held responsible for anything, either in the Introduction or in the Dictionary itself. London. February 28, 1940. INTRODUCTION CLICHÉS* IN an address delivered in December 1938 to the Institute of Journalists, Mr Frank Whitaker remarked, ‘As to clichés, I daresay we are all in agreement’. But are we? If you ask the averagely well educated person, ‘What is a cliché?’, he will look at you in pity and say ‘Oh, well! you know what a cliché is’, and hesitate, and stumble, and become incoherent. In November 1939, there met in conference a body of learned and able men: someone brought up the subject of clichés: everyone’s opinion was different: what one included, another excluded; what one excluded, another included. In short, it is a vexed question (cliché). In 1902, Edmund Gosse scathingly said that ‘All but the most obvious motives tend to express themselves no longer as thoughts but as clichés’; in 1910, O.Henry in Whirligigs invented a story based on the widespread use of clichés, and in it he wrote, ‘It was wonderful… And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices do them part’ (‘until death do them part’: cliché); and in 1932, that acute dialectician and admirable prose-writer, Mr Frank Binder, went so far as to say (cliché) that ‘There is no bigger peril either to thinking or to education than the popular phrase’, in which he included both catch-phrase and cliché. What, therefore, is a cliché? Perhaps intellectual and intelligent opinion has not yet been so far crystallized as to justify a definition. The Oxford English Dictionary says that it is ‘a stereotyped expression, a commonplace phrase’. I * An abridged version (seven-thirteenths the length of this) appeared in John o’ London’s Weekly in March, 1940. should (ex cathedra ignorantiœ, as Mr Humbert Wolfe once said wittily of someone else) like to enlarge on that definition and render it more practical, more comprehensive. The origin of the term may help, for, as Littré shows, cliché is the substantivized participle of clicher, a variant of cliquer, ‘to click’; clicher is a die-sinkers’ term for ‘to strike melted lead in order to obtain a cast’; hence, a cliché is a stereotyped expression—a phrase ‘on tap’ as it were—and this derivative sense, which has been current in France since the early ’eighties, came to England ca. 1890. Revenons à nos moutons (cliché). A cliché is an outworn commonplace; a phrase, or short sentence, that has become so hackneyed that careful speakers and scrupulous writers shrink from it because they feel that its use is an insult to the intelligence of their audience or public: ‘a coin so battered by use as to be defaced’ (George Baker). Clichés range from fly-blown phrases (‘much of a muchness’; ‘to all intents and purposes’), metaphors that are now pointless (‘lock, stock and barrel’), formulas that have become mere counters (‘far be it from me to…’)—through sobriquets that have lost all their freshness and most of their significance (‘the Iron Duke’)—to quotations that are nauseating (‘cups that cheer but not inebriate’), and foreign phrases that are tags (‘longo intervallo’, ‘bête noire’). Why are clichés so extensively used? Their ubiquity is remarkable and rather frightening. ‘Haste encourages them, but more often they spring from mental laziness’ (Frank Whitaker); then, too, they are a convenience, of which more anon (cliché). A half-education—that snare of the half-baked and the ready-made—accounts for many: an uncultured, little-reading person sees a stock phrase and thinks it apt and smart; he forgets that its aptness should put him on guard. The love of display often manifests itself in the adoption of foreign phrases (especially French) and Classical tags (Latin, not Greek). The use of clichés approximates to the use of proverbs, and certain proverbial phrases lie on the Tom Tiddler’s Ground or No Man’s Land between the forces of Style and Conscience entrenched on the one side and those of Lack of Style and Consciencelessness on the other: but proverbs are instances of racial wisdom, whereas clichés are instances of racial inanition. It is perhaps not irrelevant to note that with the rapidly decreasing popularity of proverbs among the middle and upper classes, clichés are, there, becoming increasingly popular. But are not clichés sometimes justifiable? To say ‘Never’ would be going too far. In the address from which I have already quoted twice, an address reprinted in The Journal of the Institute of Journalists, January 1939, Mr Whitaker says that he has ‘heard their use in [Association] football reports defended on the ground that the public expects them and would feel lost without them.