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A cliché (UK: / ˈ k l iː ʃ eɪ / or US: / k l iː ˈ ʃ eɪ /; French:) is a saying, idea, or element of an artistic work that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning, novelty, or figurative or artistic power, even to the point of now being bland or uninteresting. [1]
Bromide in literary usage means a phrase, cliché, or platitude that is trite or unoriginal. It can be intended to soothe or placate; it can suggest insincerity or a lack of originality in the speaker. [1] [2] Bromide can also mean a commonplace or tiresome person, a bore (a person who speaks in bromides).
The word is a borrowing from the French compound platitude, from plat 'flat' + -(i)tude '-ness', thus 'flatness'. The figurative sense is first attested in French in 1694 in the meaning 'the quality of banality' and in 1740 in the meaning 'a commonplace remark'.
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a figurative or non-literal meaning, rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic language , an idiomatic expression's meaning is different from the literal meanings of each word inside it. [ 1 ]
A snowclone is a clichéd phrase in which one or more words can be substituted to express a similar idea in a different context, often to humorous or sarcastic effect. For example, "the mother of all pizzas" is based on the phrase "the mother of all battles" that became famous after it was uttered by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
An idiom (the quality of it being known as idiomaticness or idiomaticity) is a syntactical, grammatical, or phonological structure peculiar to a language that is actually realized, as opposed to possible but unrealized structures that could have developed to serve the same semantic functions but did not.
In McLuhan's terms, a cliché is a "normal" action, phrase, etc. which becomes so often used that we are "anesthetized" to its effects. An example of this given by McLuhan is Eugène Ionesco's play The Bald Soprano, whose dialogue consists entirely of phrases Ionesco pulled from an Assimil language book. "Ionesco originally put all these ...