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Q&A What to do with cliched metaphors?

As is typical with tired language and cliches, the main problem here is not simply that the phrase is overly familiar, but that it is inappropriate to the scene. This is not a scene in which two pe...

posted 4y ago by Mark Baker‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Mark Baker‭ · 2020-05-24T10:11:57Z (over 4 years ago)
As is typical with tired language and cliches, the main problem here is not simply that the phrase is overly familiar, but that it is inappropriate to the scene. This is not a scene in which two people fail to take each other's meaning, despite speaking the same language. Mother and daughter understand each other perfectly. They simply don't agree. It is not a difference in understanding, but a difference in values. Each knows perfectly well what the other is saying. They simply have different views on the importance of health vs experience.

So the first and foremost problem is not that the words are a cliche, but that they are the wrong cliche. 

In _Politics and the English Language_, Orwell talks about the tendency to think in stock phrases, and to write by stringing these stock phrases together. The problem with this in not merely the use of tired phrases, it is that it results in imprecise thought and expression. The writer ends up saying, and perhaps even thinking, something less precise than is called for. 

Think through the problem itself, Orwell advised, and then compose the most apt words to express the thought. That may indeed bring you back to familiar phrases and familiar metaphors (or similes, which is what you have in this case) but if it does so, it will be because they are the most apt words to express your meaning, and as such they will not offend the ear.