The dictionary of cliches [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONThe cliché has a bad name as an overworked and therefore banal expression. Spoken or written by someone who is not thinking much about what he is saying or writing, it usually upholds that reputation. Among people who do pay attention to their phrasing, however, clichés can serve as the lubricant of language: summing up a point or a situation, easing a transition in thought, adding a seasoning of humor to a discourse. Indeed, with a keen sense of where such a familiar saying comes from and what it means one can give his prose a piquant turn by embroidering a cliché, as the columnist George Will did when he exclaimed over the fact that the fans of the Chicago Cubs support their team "through thin and thin." My aim in this dictionary has been to provide that sense of where the familiar expressions of English come from.Doubtless as you look through this book you find sayings that strike you as proverbs. Many of them are. Since proverbs represent the distilled wisdom from decades or centuries of human experience, it is small wonder that many of them become fixtures of the language. If you were to leaf through The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, however, you would find more unfamiliar than familiar entries, since time passes many proverbs by or overwork causes them to lose favor. The distinction I have made between proverb and cliché is current use: if a proverb still gets heavy duty in the language, it ranks as a cliché.I accumulated many of the entries in this book in, of all places, China, when a group from Scientific American went there to celebrate the launching of the translated edition of the magazine. My colleagues, wordsmiths all, knew of this project and obligingly fired clichés at me throughout the trip. I doubt that there is an easier way to assemble a list of familiar expressions than to draw on the experience of some 50 well-read people, and I am grateful to them for their help.J. T. R.Sugar Loaf, N.Y. June 1985