About people who talk in cliches?

[Ritascornershop]

My exhusband and I are from different English-speaking countries (think Australia and Scotland or England and America etc). So when I met him (& was quite young) I don’t think I noticed that he talks in cliches as I likely put it down to him being fascinatingly foreign.

It’s difficult to explain, but it’s like he can’t speak more than a couple of sentences without falling back on cliches/idioms/figures of speech. It’s almost like he is from another planet and trying to copy human speech but “over-shooting the mark” as he’d put it.

Fortunately I don’t have to interact with him anymore, but I’m curious about this way of using speech. Is it lack of original thought, habit, class, intelligence? I don’t notice it with anyone else (outside his family!).

Op - Would you prefer it if we all spoke in newspeak, the language of the totalitarian state of oceania?

Vulpine, no, that would not be my preferred alternative. I’d prefer people put sentences together mostly using original phrasing with the occasional idiom etc thrown in.

I often wonder at what point in their lives people start to speak like this, as you don't hear children doing it. And do they continue to do it with their friends/partner/children? (Probably.)

Um, “think” whatever is one of the more irritating cliched forms of expression on MN. Like people need help imagining two different English speaking countries?
I can see the irritant factor (especially in an ex husband!), but I think we all have idiosyncrasies of speech which someone could be annoyed by.

My husband is not a native English speaker and sometimes when he uses idioms he gets it slightly wrong so he says "whatever have you " instead of what have you. I don't have the heart to tell him. He also says puppet instead of puppet. Which really amuses me.

*puppet instead of poppet

“Going forward” - what’s wrong with in future or from now on? And “ahead of” - what’s wrong with before?

I am terrible for 'actually' and 'apparently' but I'm trying to use them less

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

@SerenDippitty Ugh ‘going forward’! I fucking hate that phrase! Going forward as opposed to what? Bending time and space and actually moving backwards??

‘Over the moon’ too, that’s a classic

And the current trend of starting every sentence with so

Good to see we're all on the same page 🤣🤣🤣

“The situation we have is that yet again J has not done their job properly but will not be pulled up on this and will continue to be employed. D has employed unsuitable people (again) and P will manipulate everything to get stuff done the way he wants. We will all have to cover this, the job will get done and nothing will change.”

Or, to put it another way - “It is what it is.”

I start to feel uncharacteristically violent every time somebody says "So no pressure, then!"

Unless they are diagnosing a completely flat tyre or a boiler/water system requiring attention, in which case it's a perfectly acceptable thing to declare, it's always trotted out as if it's such a witty and original thing to say - "It's REALLY, REALLY amusing, though, because.... IN FACT, you actually WILL be feeling quite a lot of pressure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

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....

....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' !

"Not gonna lie" grinds my gears

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

I think it's just the way cookie crumbles.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?