About people who talk in cliches?

It’s a way of keeping people at a distance, avoiding intimacy by not really connecting.

The grass may be greener, but it still needs mowing.

I tend to fall back on clichés when I have to take my turn in the conversation but everything I am thinking is socially unacceptable to say out loud, such as "I find you boring" or "Your views are repellent" or "how is this my problem?"

It is what it is.

@BillywilliamV
run this up my flagpole and see who salutes - never heard this one before!!! Love it!!

I was going to say that I hate it when posters say "think Australia and Scotland" because we are all too thick to know what different English speaking countries are but someone got there before me.

I do hate "put my big girl pants on" though.

most up them

most of them

I don't think most people would judge somebody or look down on them if they have learning difficulties, struggle academically in general or just casually use cliches as part of their unremarkable everyday speaking. Also, if English is not their first language, people well understand that (except for the idiots who go on holiday to Spain and complain that everybody keeps speaking Spanish).

As PPs have said (including me), worst of all are the people who use tired old cliches so smugly and clearly believe that they're being jaunty or showing their own cleverness - maybe even trying to suggest that their use of hackneyed old phrases is actually what marks them out as better than others who don't.

By far the worst offenders are those at very highly-paid management levels - roles which you'd assume should require a high level of intelligence and, more importantly, an ability to think originally and independently to make bold business decisions. Instead, though, most up them demonstrate the exact opposite and push the envelope, park the macro, run things up the flagpole, sing from the same hymnsheet and, ironically, don't see the irony in practising the exact same 'blue-sky thinking' as almost every other CEO/senior manager in almost every other company.

Touched out is one that I hate. It doesn't even make sense!

This is not a new thing. I can remember my mother, many years ago, getting riled up about the expression 'by and large' and how completely meaningless it was: 'by what and how large' was her question.

She'd also get quite cross when the radio announcer - Radio 4 - announced 'it's almost exactly' (5o'clock): 'it's either almost or exactly, it can't be both' was her observation on that one.

God knows how she'd have coped with today's speech with its glaringly poor grammar such as 'should of, could of'. I suspect the poor woman's head would have exploded.

I think you have to take the rough with the smooth.

We I find it really irritating when posters write something about themselves but then don't what to share the details so they write "think.... blah blah blah" as an example 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Why would you assume that a dislike of something automatically means that the disliker feels superior?

Because of the OP:

Is it lack of original thought, habit, class, intelligence?

You dislike people using just the basic words in conversation

Interesting that you make that assumption, having commented on what you assume I am assuming.

Because it’s a feeling superior over trivial things thread, with obligatory character judgement to justify the unwarranted sneering

Why would you assume that a dislike of something automatically means that the disliker feels superior. That doesn't follow at all, I can't help that I hate to hear cliches, I'm not doing it to feel superior, for whatever reason my brain is annoyed by it.

You dislike people using just the basic words in conversation - do you feel superior to them because you use idiomatic language?

why restrict language in all its idiosyncratic forms?

Because it’s a feeling superior over trivial things thread, with obligatory character judgement to justify the unwarranted sneering.
Feels like being in an Enid Blyton book round here sometimes.

I agree, why restrict language in all its idiosyncratic forms?

I've found the thread quite sad.

My DH struggles very much with vocabulary, so he often speaks in cliches to communicate the best he can.

You'll never meet a kinder, more generous or supportive man than my DH but if you'd like to negativity judge his character by his speech then that says more about you than him.

"Turkeys voting for Christmas" should be punishable with jail time now.

People who say, "to be fair" are always the most unfair people.

I think it's just the way cookie crumbles.

‘I don’t mean to be funny but ......’. I worked with a woman who prefixed almost every sentence with this.

"Not gonna lie" grinds my gears

....Also, when the 'trendy' people switched from 'it's gone a bit pear-shaped' to 'it's gone all Pete Tong'. This showed how amazing they were, as Pete Tong was such a cool, fashionable personality for them to reference and reveal how up-to-the-minute and on-trend they were.

Notice how nobody ever described something undeniably harsh as being ' all Alan Titchmarsh' !

Do you remember when people used to constantly say that things had “gone a bit pear shaped “,and they either found it really cute or funny or something because they looked like they’d said something clever.

Man, I used to HATE that

That's by far the worst thing. I don't overly object when people nonchalantly use a hackneyed old phrase to describe the current event or their opinion of it.... but when somebody genuinely believes that they've demonstrated their amazing original raconteur style by selecting this esoteric phrase that all lesser other people would never even have in their 'wit banks' to begin with, much less think to withdraw and appositely proclaim it for maximum comic effect.

When somebody slips and takes a slight tumble, WHOEVER else would EVER have thought of shouting out such original comedy gold as "Enjoy your trip!!!!!!!!" ?! It really is both the most helpful AND hilarious thing that you could have possibly done....