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Re: Most annoying word--what's a cliche, anyway?--- Kathy Nemaric <kjnresearch -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote: A family friend, when I was little, had a household rule that every inappropriate use of the word _thing_ cost a quarter. And I'm talking the early 1950s, when a quarter was a week's allowance. Things have names. In the early 1970s I worked in a butcher shop where we provided a sandwich every day for lunch to a delivery driver for the local beer distributor; in exchange, he provided a six-pack (from his two-case-a-day breakage allowance). We paid a quarter to take a beer. The money went toward the annual Christmas party, and the boss chipped in the rest. What makes it a cliche? By many definitions, being "overused." Interesting word, cliché. I was perusing a book yesterday that I was given for Christmas, _Booktopia,_ and it mentioned that cliché derives from the imitative sound, cliche [kleesh], of wet paper matrix being dropped onto metal to make a stereotype mat. Can't be, I thought; the word must be older than than the stereotyping process. But, no, when I looked up the etymology, that is in fact what it comes from. So here we have a printing process--stereotyping--used to make a copy of made-up page in hot metal, which then becomes, in English, a metaphor for treating members of a class as copies of each other; and then the sound--heard only by the relatively small number of newspaper printing craftsmen who've ever made stereotypes in France--of one step in the process becomes the word we use to describe an expression that is used repetitively (as a stereotype is when it is used to print the newspaper). Betcha didn't know that, didja? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content delivery. Try it today!. http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l Doc-To-Help includes a one-click RoboHelp project converter. It's that easy. Watch the demo at http://www.componentone.com/TECHWRL/DocToHelp2005 --- You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- infoinfocus -dot- com -dot- To unsubscribe send a blank email to techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40infoinfocus.com To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info. References:
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