A young lady was interviewed recently about something or other and came up with a cliche which I heard for the first time just a month or so ago but which seems to be gaining ground;
"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger"
It sounds like a bad line from a Star Trek film, probably spoken by a Klingon at a point where the writer realises he has already used "Today is a good day to die".
OK sweetie, let's have your leg off. We'll do it properly, it won't hurt and it won't kill you. Then you can tell us how you're stronger. Wodya mean "hop off"?
Is this an old one that I've only just tripped over? Any other new ones mutating out there?
JH
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Friedrich Nietzsche
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
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Ah. Got it wrong then didn't he? Although I do remember my mother saying "what doesn't kill will cure" as she fought some particularly distasteful medicine in. :-)
JH
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"Got it wrong then didn't he?"
I think he was talking of mental rather than physical injury and to a large degree its surely true. How many of us would cope with the levels of stress and hardship that many of our parent and grandparents went through. The tougher your life the tougher you become.
My favourite Nietsche quotation:
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything"
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>> which I heard for the first time just a month or so ago but
>> which seems to be gaining ground;
Yes a very well known phrase, as others have explained above, but it just goes to show that you can miss something for years, but once it registers, you start to notice it everywhere.
No doubt you have heard it a hundred times before, but your brain never registered it (for whatever reason).
Last edited by: SteelSpark on Wed 30 Jun 10 at 20:36
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If you choose your circumstances, rather than fire hosing (cliche alert!) it about.
JH
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I'd never thought of cliches mutating but I suppose they do. "Off one's own back, instead of "bat" is an annoying one. Another is "at one foul (instead of fell) swoop".
Actually that's a misquotation from Shakespeare and there must be hundreds of those, including famously "All that glitters (glisters in original) is not gold".
One I first heard maybe 15 years ago seems to have reached critical mass recently - "to p--- on one's chips", meaning roughly to burn your bridges but maybe with a bigger hint of acting foolishly. I wonder what that mutated from?
What I really like about sayings is how I've realised that some of the apparently meaningless phrases heard as a child have real meaning and knowledge behind them. "Sleep on it" is one I can bring to mind. Its amazing how often I wake up with an answer to a knotty problem if I make a point of thinking about it as I am going to sleep. Seriously, try it!
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 30 Jun 10 at 22:05
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Reminds me of the song lyrics people come up with www.kissthisguy.com/ :-)
JH
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The dog's wotists isn't my favourite - What happened to the cat's whiskers ?
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>> Or the 'Bee's knees'.
A good mate of mine keeps getting these the wrong way round ie "the dog's knees" or "the bee's *bits*". I'm not entirely sure that he does it accidentally as he's very good at acting dim to hide his intelligence but it's very funny all the same. Especially after a pint of Old Dirigible or two.
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- What happened to the cat's whiskers ?
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we now should be buying dab radios apparently
cats whiskers are dead :-(
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here here or hear hear - often spelt wrong....
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when did people start forgetting how to spell lose and losing? Zero might say it doesn't matter, but soon we'll have lost the words for loose and loosing!
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>> when did people start forgetting how to spell lose and losing? Zero might say it
>> doesn't matter, but soon we'll have lost the words for loose and loosing!
why not? we have loost loads of words since shakespeares day
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Witnesses and passers-by interviewed after dramatic incidents seem to me to react often in an increasingly stilted and stereotyped way, as if repeating poorly-learned B movie dialogue.
Am I simply getting more snobbish and misanthropic in my old age, or have I noticed an advancing globalisation of the salty local-dialect vox pop I remember as a child, everything drowning in a tide of New Jersey and Estuary effluent?
Perhaps it's all to the good. But I'm content to be a dinosaur.
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"Devastated" and "gutted" seems to cover everything from a load of "tired" millionaires being unable to play some ball game to multiple fatalities as a result of some tragic incident.
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Yes AC, quite right. Part of the prompt for this post was overhearing a conversation. The lady involved was describing a situation by stringing cliches together, as though, as you say, from a B film script. I don't think she uttered any original dialogue.
On the subject of Nietzsche (and I still think the line is from a Star trek film I've never seen);
.*******
who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'bout the raisin' of the wrist.
.*******
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
'alf a crate of whiskey every day!
.*********
and Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken f***:
"I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
.*********
Courtesy of the Flying Circus.
JH
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Shouldn't that be loosening?:)
Pat
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>> Shouldn't that be loosening?:)
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>> Pat
No ;-) Different meaning, as I'm sure you know.
You might loose the dogs, but you wouldn't loosen them, or I hope lose them.
v. loosed, loos·ing, loos·es
v.tr.
1. To let loose; release: loosed the dogs.
2. To make loose; undo: loosed his belt.
3. To cast loose; detach: hikers loosing their packs at camp.
4. To let fly; discharge: loosed an arrow.
5. To release pressure or obligation from; absolve: loosed her from the responsibility.
6. To make less strict; relax: a leader's strong authority that was loosed by easy times.
v.intr.
1. To become loose.
2. To discharge a missile; fire.
Idiom:
on the loose
1. At large; free.
2. Acting in an uninhibited fashion.
I liked "hikers loosing their packs at camp". It doesn't mean they can't find them again ;-)
And I'm not sure which is worse, loosing your missiles or losing them!
Anyway I'll be in trouble for this if I carry on...
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In much the same way the phrase: to go through something with a fine-tooth comb, is often used with a misplaced emphasis and the phrase becomes a fine tooth-comb. I once worked for someone who used to ask for documents to be "tooth-combed" i.e. checked thoroughly.
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Shouldn't that be 'fine toothed comb'?:)
Sorry, I'll go outside now and enjoy the garden!
Pat
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I've always had a hankering to start my own cliche, and then watch it developing and spreading.
So I'll make a suggestion:
remember on Desert Island Discs the presenter always asks for a choice of a book, apart from the Bible, Shakespeare and big encyclopaedias,
"which are already on the island".
So I would like to start the cliche "already on the island", meaning already taken care of, all preparation done, sorted. Said with a certain smugness, as if implying I, with my massive organisational ability, have already covered that point. You just need to get on with the job now.
Try casually throwing it into a conversation. Most people won't bat an eyelid, but will just subconsciously pick it up. Then the NEXT time they hear it, it registers as a genuine expression, and they may then themselves bring it out in similar circumstances.
That I suggest is the break-through point in cliche propagation - the expression has to be aheard from at least two unconnected sources.
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ooh I like that! Mission accepted. Does the tape self destruct in 30 seconds?
JH
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Cliff.
Are you the sort of person that starts chain letters? ;>)
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Brilliant Cliff - now stolen with pride !
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I wasn't being pedantic CG, honestly, I don't do pedantic!
My lorry driver sense of humour sometimes get's misunderstood on here:)
Pat
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I thought it was funny.
JH
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Cliff, sorry me ole fruit, that one is already in existence, along with numerous other desert island cliches. You'll have to do some "blue sky thinking"
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>> Cliff, sorry me ole fruit, that one is already in existence, along with numerous other
>> desert island cliches. You'll have to do some "blue sky thinking"
>>
I'd like to be able to say that's because I started it. :)
Oh well, it shows it was a good try, good cliche material.
Anyone care to suggest another, unique original not-yet-a-cliche we could have a go at propagating?
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I didn't take it as pedantic either. Always enjoy your posts and your sense of humour
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I knew one spotty teenager who was called Cliche by his mates because of his ( wait for it ) ......
' acned expression'
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My late mother often used to get cliches and sayings subtly wrong, but in a creative sort of way. One I remember with great pleasure was 'a flash in the pants'.
Her tactlessness could be spectacular. On one occasion she wanted to comment on the pot belly of a person not present, in conversation with my father's then boss. Her exact words, I seem to remember, were: 'By Jove, old (name)'s got a bit of a paunch on him, hasn't he?'
Potentially risky in any case - it's a gung-ho wife who will engage in badinage with her husband's superiors in the office - the remark was rendered disastrous by my mother's substitution of the boss's name for that of the person she was actually referring to. Fortunately the departmental director, who needless to say also had a bit of a paunch, was a nice man with a sense of humour who liked my mother. But it could have been seriously embarrassing, as some of her other efforts were.
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A colleague is master of the unintended malapropism. He does however get a bit grumpy if you point it out, so care has to be taken.
On being asked if he would care to attend a meeting recently he declared that "wild flowers wouldn't drag me".
We also had a screw up by some contractors, and he declared the two of them to be like Jekyll and Hardy.
I also enjoy the way he calls these phrases "malatropes", which sets my brain in a spin.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Thu 1 Jul 10 at 16:21
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Could be a male reincarnation of my dear mother, Crankcase.
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A life lived in cliches - CGNorwich
