952. What is the boundary between idioms, slang, and clichés—and should we give "adulting" a break? We also trace the 700-year history of "organic," from bodily organs to natural growth, and ask whether using a bully pulpit makes someone a bad person.
951. In honor of National Cliché day, we uncover why some overused phrases rub us the wrong way. What is the boundary between idioms, slang, and clichés—and should we give "adulting" a break? Then, we trace the 700-year history of "organic," from bodily organs to natural growth, and ask whether using a bully pulpit makes someone a bad person.
The "cliche" segment was written by Kirk Hazen, a professor of linguistics at West Virginia University, and Jordan Lovejoy, a visiting assistant professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It first appeared on The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license (BY-ND 4.0).
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by Kirk Hazen and Jordan Lovejoy
If some words are shovel-ready for a conversation, but using them could lead to accusations that you’re not giving 110%, then should you stick a pin in them? Or perhaps you could read the room better and send thoughts and prayers to redeem these words. Are we adulting now?
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language.We're starting with this piece about clichés, written by Kirk Hazen and Jordan Lovejoy. And stick around because after this, we'll answer a question about the word "organic," a question about the phrase "bully pulpit," and learn about a man who was selling words on the street in the 1950s and '60s.
Overused phrases seem to bother people – even professional word nerds like us, a linguist and a folklorist. When it reaches the point of aggravation, they are called clichés (with or without the acute accent).
As Nov. 3 is National Cliché Day, what better time to clear up some confusion about “clichéness.” What makes a cliché a cliché? And why do we find ourselves rolling our eyes when we hear certain ones?
When it comes to identifying what these words and phrases are, there are three terms that bump into one another a lot: idiom, slang and cliché.
An idiom is a word or phrase that has a meaning different from the composition of its parts, like “kick the bucket.”
Slang is different. Slang is a word or phrase that is a synonym for another but that is also used to reference a social group. “Cheugy,” for example, is Generation Z slang for “out of date,” especially for things that used to be trendy.
A cliché, similar to slang and idioms, has an audience-focused definition, as it is a word or phrase used so often that it annoys the audience. As the Oxford English Dictionary writes, a cliché is a phrase “regarded as unoriginal or trite due to overuse.”
Borrowed from French, "cliché" comes from the printing process when a metal plate was used to physically transfer ink to paper. The term echoes the imitative sound of the plate coming off the page and was a way to represent an image again and again in nearly identical form. The dictionary notes that the earliest recorded use of the word with its current meaning was in an 1881 complaint about “the constant and facile clichés of diction.” Even the early printing usage sometimes fits well with the language sense today: From 1854, “When we … are pressed for time, we employ clichée moulds.”
Words are words, until they get used together and their sum total meaning is different from what it would be as just added-up parts. Let’s go back to the “kick the bucket” idiom, which means “to die” for many people and not actually to strike a container with your foot. There are thousands of idioms in English, and some of those become clichés. Yet even clichés can have longevity: “Red-letter day,” “baker’s dozen” and “devil’s advocate” have been around for centuries.
If you are hearing a combination of words for the first time, it cannot be a cliché for you, no matter how often other people have heard it. However, if you hear that combo of words over and over again, like a popular song on the radio, it might dip into the cliché category, especially if you are tired of hearing it.
For some audiences, “adulting” has become a cliché. Here, we have a noun shifted to a new word as a verb: "to adult." When that verb then takes on an "-ing" suffix, it means “carrying out tasks as a responsible grown-up.” Now it’s an idiom. Its new usage is socially tied to millennials, who experience that transitional phase into adulthood at different – usually later – stages than past generations. Therefore, it is also a slang term and can be used to show off millennial status. Because of its sudden popularity, some folks, like Gen Zers, may feel it is being used too much. Its overuse would make it a cliché for that audience.
Still, there are layers of meaning to different combinations of words, and those layers often depend on who is speaking and who is listening.
Take “devil’s advocate,” for example. This idiom has been around for centuries, but its usage has more recently dipped pointedly into cliché for many women and minorities who recognize it as a rhetorical move – often used by people with more privilege – to deny or downplay personal experiences of discrimination.
The speaker may not identify “devil’s advocate” as a cliché, but those listeners who are frustrated by its harmful overuse certainly do.
Slang works similarly. Older generations may become annoyed when younger speakers constantly develop and overuse new slang terms. Remember “yeet”? It was popular with Gen Z speakers, but even they may now roll their eyes at those who use such outdated clichés.
People typically don’t intend to use a cliché. They are going with a trusted tool in their lexical toolbox, and certain ones frame their conversations.
Particular words may be a cliché for small groups. If you are part of a regular meeting where that one guy always jumps in with “The fact of the matter is …,” you may cringe at that phrase. But it’s not the phrase’s fault; it’s that guy’s fault for overusing it in that context. Whether or not they are the best tools to use in conversation, clichés are the most accessible.
Conversations are like road trips. We often steer them in certain directions and away from others. We use certain words to alert listeners to turns in the conversation. In driving, we find stop signs in many places, but it would be silly to call a stop sign a cliché: Its predictable shape and color make it immediately recognizable. Words can be used the same way. Signposts like “first,” “second,” “so,” and “overall” are used – and used extremely frequently – to help audiences, and most of them are harmless.
Many things that have become cliché were once popular. So people may use clichés to fit in with others, to identify or differentiate their social groups or just to connect with people through familiar language use. Once these clichés are overused, the hippest or most socially aware among us begin to steer the conversation in a different direction. The rest of us usually follow along.
If you are already aggravated with someone who is talking, especially in frustrating contexts, one of the most human things you can do is identify something wrong with their language. If they lean in with a harmless cliché like “To be honest,” you may roll your eyes. But a bit of empathy might allow you to skip the banal words and focus on the intended meaning that follows.
Likewise, if you find yourself using clichés with a hurtful impact – like condescendingly trying to correct someone with a “Well, actually …” – you might skip those words and their intended meaning altogether.
But for National Cliché Day, let’s celebrate how useful clichés can be, as a ready tool for conversation or a starting point for new phrases – which may well become future clichés.
That segment was written by Kirk Hazen, a professor of linguistics at West Virginia University, and Jordan Lovejoy, a visiting assistant professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It first appeared on The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license (BY-ND 4.0).
by Ryan Paulson
Here's a question from a listener named Jennifer in Arlington, Virginia:
"Please, would you tackle modern uses of the word 'organic.' In grammar school, I learned that 'organic' meant 'carbon-based.' Therefore, the definition of 'composed of living matter,' makes sense as all life (as we know it) is carbon-based. From there, I can make the jump to the word being used to describe less synthetic approaches to agriculture and ecology. However, I’ve heard the word used by political, military, corporate, and other personnel in phrases like 'organic approach,' 'organic methodology,' and 'organic organizational structure' (the latter sounds redundant). And I’ve heard it used when describing art, for example, 'organic colors.' A deep dive to guide me would be welcome because my imagination is exploding."
Well, thanks, Jennifer.
When you hear the word "organic," do you think of organic farming, or farming that doesn’t make use of pesticides, herbicides, or other "artificial" means of protecting and promoting the crops that are being grown? Maybe you think of it in a scientific sense, where it means "relating to living beings" (as opposed to "inorganic," which refers to rocks or other non-living substances). Or maybe, like our listener, you’ve heard it in so many different contexts that it seems like the word has lost almost all meaning entirely.
In fact, the word "organic" has indeed had a huge variety of uses and senses throughout its 700-year history in the English language. You heard that right – it’s a word that is at least 700 years old! While many of these seem unrelated, there's more of a connection between the different uses than you might think.
Maybe the easiest way to trace this complex history is to start way back at the beginning, before the word was even adopted into the English language from both Latin and French in the early 1400s. By this point in history, Britain had gone through about three centuries of increased influence from Europe, and in particular from France. With that influence came a lot of new words being borrowed into English by people who felt that languages like French and Latin could fill some gaps in English at the time. Sometimes words were borrowed from French, and very similar words were borrowed from Latin, and often those words became blended together into different senses of the same new English word.
The primary meaning of “organique” in French was to refer specifically to the jugular vein, but in a wider sense it could refer to anything relating to the function of a specific part of the body. But the older source of "organic" in English is the borrowed Latin word "organicus," which in Classical Latin meant "relating to a musical instrument" but also "having an organized physical structure" and "relating to a bodily organ." It seems like some English people had started using the French word, others the Latin word, and eventually the meanings got all mixed up.
So we start, ultimately, with the word "organ" (which seems to have always meant both a musical instrument – a pipe organ in a cathedral – and a specific body part that carries out a specific function in the body). To that starter word "organ," we added the "-ic" ending that is often used in English to turn a noun into an adjective, like how we take the noun "artist" and make the adjective "artistic."
If you start from there – with the notion that "organic" at its core means "relating to a bodily organ" – it’s easier to trace the thread through the various meanings of the word over the centuries.
You can see how something could be "organic" because it has to do with a living thing composed of organs (as opposed to inorganic), and then you can see how something developing "organically" makes sense if you’re talking about something that could be a natural progression. Organic farming fits in nicely, because it's all about allowing things to grow in a purely natural state without "artificial" interference.
It also makes sense how businesses would be keen to adopt language that makes their approach seem much more natural, so the use of "organic" to describe corporate decisions and actions is an obvious choice from a public relations standpoint.
Once you know the longstanding history of the word in English (and before it came into English) the whole progress of the word’s various meanings, uses and senses seems much more… organic, wouldn’t you say?
That segment was written by Ryan Paulsen, an avid word nerd and co-host of the etymology podcast "Lexitecture."
By Mignon Fogarty
A few weeks ago we talked about words that have changed meaning over time, like "nice" and "silly." And another one of those words was "bully," which in its early days, was a friendly way of addressing someone. For example, here's a line from the "Century Dictionary," published in the 1800s, which says it's a way of referring to a high-spirited, dashing fellow: "I love the lovely bully."
Well, in that episode about changing meanings, we didn't talk about the phrase "bully pulpit," and a few of you asked about it, so I have a quick follow-up.
You might think the phrase refers to someone getting behind a pulpit and bullying people: harassing the audience or intimidating them. That's what I thought for years — but it's actually related to one of those good, older meanings of "bully" instead, along the lines of the old-timey phrase "Bully for you!" which meant "Good for you!" And which, from a Google Ngram search, looks like it peaked in the early 1900s.
It was right at that time that U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt coined the term. He was talking about the influence he had as president, and what a fabulous — "bully" — pulpit he had when speaking.
The Oxford English Dictionary has the first citation as an article in "Outlook"; it's an anecdote reported by the magazine's editor, Lyman Abbott, a long-time advocate of Roosevelt. And I think the full paragraph provides more context than just the one sentence that has the phrase, so I'm going to read you the whole thing:
"Half a dozen of us were with the President in his library. He was sitting at his desk reading to us his forthcoming Message. He had just finished reading a paragraph of a distinctly ethical character when he suddenly stopped, swung round in his swivel chair and said “I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!” Then he turned back to his reading again. The episode is interpretive of the man. He has been a ranchman, administrator, soldier, politician, statesman — but always and everywhere a moral reformer. I think there are two reasons for his enjoyment of his Presidential office: one, that it has enabled him to do things; the other, that it has given him a National platform from which to say things."
So people who use their bully pulpit aren't bullies the way we think of that word today. They're just taking advantage of having a platform for their ideas. Thanks for the question!
Finally, I have a familect story.
"Hey, Mignon. Huge fan of the podcast, and I wanted to share with you a quick story about the family word. Our family word is "fimfy," and the origin is New York City in the 1950s early 1960s where my mom was living and working. And on her lunch break, she would encounter, occasionally, a homeless man occasionally on this man standing on the corner selling words. He would make up these words and saw them for a penny a nickel or dime depending on how fancy the word was, and you would make up your own definition. This is the story as my mom would tell it. So she bought five-cent word one day, and the word was "fimfy," which she defined as the little ball of fuzz or lint that you find on your sweaters, or sweatshirts, or pants sometimes, and what made the story kinda funny is that she never told me that it was a made-up word. So as a child going up, I would hear mom say, "Oh, look at fimfy on your sweater. Let me get that for you," or "How did all these fimfies get on my sweatpants," or something, and so I thought it was a regular word, and it's not something you would use very often, of course, I never really had a chance to discover that it wasn't a real word until one day at school, seventh grade I guess, where at the lunch table, I glanced down and kind of off handedly remarked to my friends like "Man, I like this sweater, but it's always so covered in fimfies." And in the silence that followed, I glanced around at my friends who were giving me strange looks, and suddenly dawned on me that I never heard anyone other than my mother use the word 'fimfy.' But we still use that in our family, and I just wanted to share that story with you. I sometimes wonder about this gentleman that was selling words in Manhattan in the 1950s and '60s, and there must've been other people that encountered him, but in my brief Googling attempts I've never found anything about him. But anyway, 0love the podcast. Keep up the good work. Take care."
What a fabulous story. It reminded me of the dictionary site called Worknik run by Erin McKean because one way you can support the site is by adopting a word. I've been meaning to do it for a while, and your call prompted me to adopt the word "podcast." And if anyone out there bought a word from the man selling them on the street in Manhattan in the 1950s and '60, let me know. It actually sounds like a great story for the New York Times. You can call in at 83-321-4-GIRL, and you can also find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Pebble, Instagram, and YouTube. Social media definitely is out of control these days, but I try to be in most places so it's easy to find me.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to our audio engineer, Nathan Semes; our ad operations specialist, Morgan Christianson; our digital operations specialist, Holly Hutchings; and our marketing associate, Davina Tomlin. And I'm pleased to announce that our former intern, Kamryn Lacey, is back helping us with marketing. If you've seen my posts on social media with little excerpts of my book that's coming out November 14, "The Grammar Daily," Kamryn is the one who made the lovely image templates I've been using. And she says her favorite past-time is going to concerts.
I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.