It’s Been Said Before
A Guide to the Use and Abuse of Cliches
Orin Hargraves 2014
E-Book: 249 English pages

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Price: 1000 Toman

Download: It’s Been Said Before: A Guide to the Use and Abuse of Cliches (Hargraves 2014).

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Careful writers and speakers agree that clichés are generally to be avoided. However, nearly all of us continue to use them. Why do they persist in our language? In It’s Been Said Before, lexicographer Orin Hargraves examines the peculiar idea and power of the cliché. He helps readers understand why certain phrases became clichés and why they should be avoided — or why they still have life left in them. Indeed, clichés can be useful — even powerful. And few people even agree on which expressions are clichés and which are not. Many regard any frequent idiom as a cliché, and a phrase regarded as a cliché in one context may be seen simply as an effective expression in another. Examples drawn from data about actual usage support Hargraves’ identification of true clichés. They also illuminate his commentary on usage problems and helpful suggestions for eliminating clichés where they serve no useful purpose.
Concise and lively, It’s Been Said Before serves as a guide to the most overused phrases in the English language — and to phrases that are used exactly as often as they should be.

Review

“Mr. Hargraves, a linguist at the University of Colorado, hasn’t just compiled a list of phrases that annoy him; his approach is systematic and nuanced. He has drawn around 600 clichés from the Oxford English Corpus (a database of 2.5 billion words from contemporary English-language texts). For each he estimates its frequency, indicates its typical source, provides several examples of its use, and advises readers on when the cliché is or isn’t appropriate.”

— Wall Street Journal

About the Author

Orin Hargraves is a lexicographer and author of language reference books. He grew up in the mountains of southwestern Colorado and graduated from the University of Chicago. A past president of the Dictionary Society of North America, Hargraves has contributed to dozens of dictionaries and other language reference books. He currently lives in Niwot, Colorado, and researches the computational use of language at the University of Colorado at Boulder.