What Is a Cliché?

Clichés or "cliches" are common in everyday speech. In casual conversation they might seem just fine. However, in literature, cliches are literary devices that are usually frowned upon. That does not mean to say that the device is completely useless. Sometimes, they work simply because they are accurate. 

For example, “the apple doesn't fall far from the tree” accurately describes a son inheriting the traits of his father. The best writers, however, know how to take the grain of truth from a common phrase or saying and make it seem new.

In this article, I look at various examples of clichés, as well as examples of writers taking clichés and making them new again. In the process, I rely on works from the Saint Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte and the Elizabethan poet Ben Jonson. 

Portrait of Ben Johnson

What is a cliché?

A cliché is a phrase, remark, concept, or opinion that has often been expressed before to the point where it is unoriginal and uninteresting. We can use the word cliche to apply to common idioms or ideas in speech or language.

For example, “When it rains, it pours” is a phrase that explains that when problems or misfortune start they tend to be followed one by the other in rapid succession. Below is a table providing examples of clichés used in everyday language: 

Cliché	Definition
All that glitters is not gold	Not everything that looks valuable or true turns out to be so.
Bite the bullet	To endure a painful or unpleasant situation that is unavoidable.
Break the ice	To initiate conversation in a social setting to ease tension.
Don't judge a book by its cover	Don’t form an opinion based solely on appearance.
Hit the nail on the head	To be exactly right about something.
Let the cat out of the bag	To accidentally reveal a secret.
The calm before the storm	A peaceful period before a period of upheaval or chaos.
When it rains, it pours	Problems (or blessings) tend to come all at once, not gradually.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too	You can’t enjoy two desirable but incompatible options.
Every cloud has a silver lining	There's always something positive in a bad situation.

However, the term can be used to describe concepts in arts and literature.  For example, let’s take the following sentence: 

The subverted expectation trope has become a tired cliché in modern movies.

This means that a common movie trope of setting up viewers for certain expectations in a movie plot and then blindsiding them with an unexpected twist no longer works and surprises viewers because it happens so often. 

Here are more examples:

• The hero’s journey has now become an ineffective and tired cliché.

• She always plays the clichéd role of the dutiful, long-suffering housewife in movies.

• Too many Western movies include the cliché of the noble savage Native American character.

As I said earlier, clichés in literature are typically seen as bad writing and should be avoided. Let’s look at an example of the device from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Reapers and the Flowers” (1839):

There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,

And, with his sickle keen,

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,

And the flowers that grow between.

In the poem, the poet compares death to the Grim Reaper and uses a few awkward analogies and puns to boot. For example, “the bearded grain” is a pun on old bearded men. The flowers are a reference to the young who die before their time.

Why is this a cliché? The imagery or the analogy upon which the poem is based is more or less related to the old adage of "death comes for us all." However, the idea of death being the grim reaper in association with actual harvesting images is way too old and too common for it to be anything other than trite.

Examples of clichés being used effectively

Clichés can be used effectively in the right hands. The best poets take common clichés and turn them inside out or upside down to come up with new and interesting takes. A good example of this is Emily Dickinsons’ “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” (published in 1890).

1. Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop Death”:

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility –

Emily Dickinson has taken the common idiom of “death comes for us all” and turned it into a kind of original analogy, with death being portrayed as a polite gentleman driving a carriage. This is a far cry from Longfellow’s stereotypical Grim Reaper. 

If you were to follow the link and read the whole poem, Dickinson sustains the analogy for about six stanzas. This type of sustained analogy used to prove a point is called a conceit, and it was common among a group of English poets in the seventeenth century known as the Metaphysical poets.

One of the more prominent metaphysical poets was Ben Johnson. Our second example is his poem called “My Picture Left in Scotland” (published in 1640). 

2. Ben Jonson, “My Picture Left in Scotland”:

I now think Love is rather deaf than blind,

For else it could not be

That she,

Whom I adore so much, should so slight me

And cast my love behind.

I'm sure my language to her was as sweet,

And every close did meet

In sentence of as subtle feet,

As hath the youngest He

That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.

O, but my conscious fears,

That fly my thoughts between,

Tell me that she hath seen

My hundred of gray hairs,

Told seven and forty years

Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace

My mountain belly and my rocky face;

And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears.

The poet composed a poem on the basis that the woman he loves has left his picture in Scotland. He believes that it is a “slight,” and this has awakened his insecurities. The speaker now thinks that it’s because the lady sees that he is a little advanced in years or “seven and forty years” and sees his “hundred of gray hairs.” 

This is of course all said in light jest. But what does it have to do with clichés? Well, Ben Johnson has taken the cliché of “Love is blind” and turned it upside down on its head in light mockery. Love is not blind, but deaf.

He is a poet who has wooed this lady with the sound of his fine poetry, or as he puts it, his “language to her was as sweet” as any young poet. Yet, she still forgot his picture in Scotland. Jonson has taken a common or trite saying and uses humor and irony to breathe new life into it.

Our third example is from the Saint Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte, who also uses a conceit to repurpose an old cliché. The poem is “Mamoyi” (published in 2005). 

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3. Kendel Hippolyte, “Mamoyi”:

The child is sleeping,

folded in among the brown boughs of my arms,

and a promise, formed beyond language, drawn upward

like sap through a pith, stirs through me. . . .

The poet relies on the everyday adage of sons being their father’s seed and has turned it into an elaborate and extended conceit. It begins by comparing his arms to “brown boughs.” His deep feelings of protection and loyalty toward his newborn son are described as a “promise . . .  drawn upward like sap.” 

The full poem is fourteen lines long, and the analogy between man, tree, and seed is sustained throughout. The ability of the poet to sustain this comparison without any aspect of it coming across as stale is what saves the poem from coming across as trite or tired. 

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2025, June 04). What is a Cliché? EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/what-is-a-cliche