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Writing
Jun 02, 2008, 08:22AM

It Was a Dark and Perfectly Stormy Night

An envelope-pushing roundup of overused, tired phrases in our language. Sure to produce shock and awe, this is not your father's list of trite phrases.

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More than a decade before he struck the motherlode with The Simpsons, Matt Groening established his pop-cultural bona fides with the syndicated comic strip “Life in Hell,” which now appears in countless weekly newspapers, as well as some dailies, throughout the nation. Initially self-published and sold as an underground comic book in 1977, “Life in Hell” made the transition to a strip format the next year in plucky Wet magazine; for that first foray into the commercial market, Groening produced “Forbidden Words,” a compendium of overworked/overused words and phrases that has since become an annual “Life in Hell” tradition, the linguistic equivalent of Mr. Blackwell’s 10 Worst Dressed List.

Something of a public service, it documents the passing of a word or phrase from merely annoying to officially clichéd. The 1997 “Forbidden Words,” for example, drove a stake through the hearts of “been there/done that,” “empowerment,” “don’t go there,” and “no-brainer,” among others. Not that any of them actually died. Despite Groening’s best efforts as language cop, each of those locutions, regrettably, remains a fixture in the American vernacular.

Maybe I’m just oversensitive, but it seems as if that vernacular has become increasingly populated by such irritants. Seldom does a day pass that I don’t read or hear a spokesperson for a business or a government agency accused of fraud, malfeasance, or general screwups routinely note that his/her employer “takes very seriously” the criticism leveled against it; or an attorney headed to court reflexively vow “to vigorously defend” his/her client.  

In short, a paucity of imagination pervades public discourse, a situation exacerbated by lazy journalists and pre-programmed flacks in a superheated media universe. Born of a specific political, social, military, economic, or, especially, cultural phenomenon, words and phrases often become ubiquitous, and then, depending on their individual adaptability, either gradually disappear or permanently take up residence in the vernacular. Ones adaptable enough to be applied to multiple situations stick around (“push the envelope,” “outside the box,” “win-win situation”); others, tethered too tightly to a discrete source and with insufficient flexibility, hit the road (“voodoo economics,” “coalition of the willing,” “shock and awe”).

Hatched by the Pentagon in 2003 to describe its bombing strategy at the outset of the Iraq war, “shock and awe” immediately migrated into the mother tongue before fading away after a year, perhaps two at most. Now seldom uttered or written, “shock and awe,” despite its horrific origin, seems almost quaint. It came across as jarring when mentioned in a spring 2007 news item about D.C. madam Deborah Jeanne Palfrey, whose client list of Washington notables included Harlan K. Ullman, the Department of Defense consultant who coined “shock and awe.”  
 
A similarly brief radioactive half-life characterized “where’s the beef?” Spawned in a 1984 TV commercial for Wendy’s fast-food restaurants, the phrase—mouthed by octogenarian actress Clara Peller to vilify the supposed skimpiness of burgers made by rivals—quickly metastasized, famously uttered that same year by former Vice President Walter Mondale to question the substance of policies advocated by Gary Hart, his then-principal opponent in the campaign to snag the Democratic Party’s nomination for President. These days, if you were to introduce “where’s the beef?” into a conversation, it likely would elicit bemused embarrassment from anyone over the age of 40 and stares of befuddlement from anyone younger.        

This season’s presidential campaign has produced similar embraces of forbidden words—or words destined for forbiddeness. Just a month ago, on the eve of the North Carolina primary, Hillary Clinton delivered a sensational one-two combination when she told supporters in that state, “This primary election on Tuesday is a game-changer. This is going to make a huge difference in what happens going forward.”

“Going forward”—or its twin, “moving forward”—has been an odorless, colorless, meaningless staple of politicians and businesspeople for what seems an eternity, while “game-changer” has seeped into the mainstream more recently, buoyed by “Little Mo” (for “little momentum”), an enduring catchphrase from the 1980 presidential campaign.

Other forbidden words currently mucking up the language: “this is not your father's [insert noun here],” “low-hanging fruit,” “challenging environment,” and, the big kahuna, “perfect storm.” Bounding out of the 1997 book and 2000 film of the same name, perfect storms whirl and whip through our lives at an alarming rate, preceding both beneficial and tragic outcomes, usually the latter. (Apparently, nature abhors an imperfect storm, or, at the very least, our culture refuses to acknowledge publicly a less-than-perfect one.)

Unfortunately, “perfect storm” appears to have “Big Mo” (which pre-dated “Little Mo” in 1980) on its side, destined to join “too much on my plate,” “closure,” and “have a good one” as entrenched language vexations, having already surpassed its “tipping point.”

Discussion
  • This piece should be posted at every political newspaper/magazine/website bureau in the country. Maybe then reporters who are covering this campaign would stop copying each other with repetitive phrases like "a path to the nomination" or "the narrative of Hillary's sudden populism."

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  • Hey, what about "Guilty Pleasure," that is the worst. Dude also bugs me, and I can't see why you guys hate "no problem," it's a fine phrase, it's now short for thank you.

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  • Bingo! Thanks, I-can't-spell-macaroni! "Guilty pleasure" is perhaps the worst cliche today, especially when a film or tv or music reviewer uses it. Like, "Oh, I can't really stand the tone, but still, Gawker's a guilty pleasure of mine." If it's a pleasure, it's not guilty.

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  • do you understand what guilty pleasure means? Because from that statement, I don't think you do. It means when you enjoy something but feel bad about some part of it. For instance a person who enjoys looking at Gawker, but feels bad about employing paparazzi scum and wasting their time on celebrity news. They enjoy the voyeurism, but feel guilty about it, hence the term, "guilty pleasure." So in conversation when you are describing something like that what do you use? Do you just spell out the whole scenario just so you don't have to use the "worst cliche today"? Honestly are you people actually bothered when somebody says "no problem?" Really? I would imagine it is hard getting through a day with a mindset like that. I only get that mad over horse and dolphin abuse but "to each his own."

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  • Of course I know what a guilty pleasure is, and it is a terrible cliche that should be eradicated from the english language, it's just a stupid phrase.

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  • BillyIdol is being purposely dense. He must've lost at a cockfighting match down in Dan'l Boone country. "Guilty pleasure" is awful, and there are ways not to use it. The problem with cliches is that they become shorthand, and writers and people in conversation don't think before using such a cliche, even if it's grating on the eyes or ears. I also can't stand "Speaking truth to power," which might have meant something at one time, but now it's used so frequently it's stripped of any strength. And "carbon footprint" is approaching that territory now.

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  • What about people who still, inexplicably, use the phrase "jumping the shark"? The paucity of imagination never disappoints.

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  • You people are unbelievable. There's a difference between a phrase and a cliche. As BillyIdol said, "guilty pleasure" sums up a fairly complicated idea in two words; it's not lazy so much as necessary. Why don't we "outlaw" (read: complain about) "cliches" like Home Run, Fat Free, or Bacon Cheeseburger. What "paucity of imagination" we all have!

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  • Filthy, it could be that funkiness is clouding your vision. Of course a phrase can be a cliche. And "guilty pleasure," while at one time might have been a witty use of language, its time has passed. Maybe you ought to take the mother of all showers.

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  • Alright man Ill make you a wager- I use, no problem, guilty pleasure, and jumping the shark in a casual conversation, and you use, "The paucity of the imagination never disappoints," and we'll see who more people are annoyed by. And Sourpuss I agree carbon footprint is kind of annoying, usually because it comes from those loud political types though. Cockfighting though? Come on dogg i thought we were e-pals.

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  • BillyIdol, you my dogg, man! Seriously, you being from the South and all, I thought you might have seen some cockfighting, which sounds pretty interesting to me. Please don't bum me out and say you're with the carbon footprint crowd that wants to ban bullfighting worldwide.

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  • ha naw man, i dont really worry too much about chickens or carbon footprinting. I don't know much about bullfighting, but somethings got to keep those italians busy- otherwise they get up to no good, grabbing their crotches while yelling at women and the like.

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  • Italians? You've been hitting the moonshine, Billy. And a man of the world like you has never been to a bullfight. As Michael Yockel would NOT say, "Go figure."

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  • In this month's Vanity Fair, James Wolcott has an excellent essay on "man crushes," one of the most annoying recent catch-phrases popular in the media today. I hope this one dies out soon.

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  • I caught that VF piece, and I agree: it was dope. As for all these cliches we're bandying about, I also agree they are lacking. But maybe we should make a distinction between cultural cliches and media cliches? Does it matter? Someone who drops "carbon footprint" in casual conversation is trying to cash in on a cliched cache (mm, cheesy alliteration), whereas "dude" is, well, ubiquitous, dude. I don't think these phrases are going anywhere. (Who wants to bring back 'hip' as a verb?)

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  • Yockel ought to compile a daily list of cliche transgressions. Just yesterday, June 25, this was the lead sentence of a New York Times article: "Lawyers who sued the makers of the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas profess to be shocked, simply shocked, that few people who bought the game were offended by sex scenes buried in its software." Writing doesn't get any lazier than this.

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  • On the topic of baseball, can't a pitch be simply good or great instead of "filthy" or "nasty"?

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  • @ Greenlight. No. There is a fundamental difference between a "good" or "great" pitch (the terms often used to describe a backdoor slider, fastball that touches the corners or clutch pitch that freezes the batter without substantial break) and something that is "filthy" or "nasty", which refers to something that breaks so much and confuses the batter to such a degree that it borders on being unfair. Anyway, how boring would the game be if every strike were described using bland words like "good" or "great?" Sorry to get off topic.

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  • "In short, a paucity of imagination pervades public discourse, a situation exacerbated by lazy journalists and pre-programmed flacks in a superheated media universe." Congratulations, Michael, I think you've just penned the next journalistic catch phrase. Look for it in an US magazine caption soon.

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  • Hey Marty, you seem like a total pop culture maven. So what phrases irk you? And which ones bugged you "back in the day"?

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  • Hey, it is what it is.

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  • @Martywombacher: baby steps, my friend, baby steps.

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