Crushes Cliches

Help Us Kill the Clichés!

The ClicheCrush team wants your help growing our collection of tired phrases. If you’ve spotted an overused idiom or a stale metaphor not yet in our 5,000-entry database, we want to hear about it.

How to contribute:

• Email: Send your finds to [email protected].
• Goal: We help writers keep their prose fresh and original.
• Focus: We specialize in spotting “semantic exhaustion” in any manuscript.

Do you think you’ve found a phrase that’s “lost its luster,” or is that metaphor already too stagnant for us? Help us win the war against cliches and send your suggestions to [email protected].

Cliches. Where Do They Come From?

Shakespeare is often called the “King of Clichés,” but it’s a bit of a backhanded compliment. He didn’t use clichés; he was so good at capturing a feeling or a situation that his phrases were hijacked by everyone else for the next 400 years.

He is credited with introducing or popularizing over 1,700 words and hundreds of idioms. Because his work was the cornerstone of English education for centuries, these phrases were drilled into the collective consciousness until they lost their original poetic punch and became “semantic filler.”

The “Shakespearean” Cliché List

You likely use these every week without realizing you’re quoting a 16th-century play:

• “Wild-goose chase” (Romeo and Juliet)
• “Break the ice” (The Taming of the Shrew)
• “Green-eyed monster” (Othello)
• “In a pickle” (The Tempest)
• “Heart of gold” (Henry V)
• “Faint-hearted” (Henry VI, Part I)
• “Vanish into thin air” (The Tempest)
• “Good riddance” (Troilus and Cressida)

Why did they stick?

He had a mechanical knack for functional shifts (turning nouns into verbs, like “gossip” or “elbow”) and vivid metaphors. When he needed to describe a hopeless search, he didn’t just say “difficult search”; he called it a “wild-goose chase.” It was so descriptive that the language simply kept it.

As the literary critic Bernard Levin famously put it:

“If you recall your salad days… you are quoting Shakespeare. If you act more in sorrow than in anger… you are quoting Shakespeare. Even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing… you are quoting Shakespeare.”

Read our blog to see the interesting cliche origins beyond Shakespeare.