Dull as Ditchwater: a dozen interesting things about clichés

1.    I asked 100 people to complete the phrase, ‘As blind as a...’. There were no surprises.

2.    Bats are not blind...

3.    But bees do have knees.

4.    These...

           

            As dead as a doornail

            A fool’s paradise

            A foregone conclusion

            A tower of strength

            As white as driven snow

            Bag and baggage

            Bated breath

            Cold comfort

            Come full circle

            Dog will have its day

            Give the devil his due

Hoist with his own petard

I have not slept one wink

In my heart of hearts

In my mind’s eye

Love is blind

More in sorrow than in anger

More sinned against than sinning

Neither here nor there

Not a mouse stirring

Play fast and loose

Stood on ceremonies

Sweets to the sweet

The be all and end all

Till the crack of doom

To make a virtue of necessity

To the manner born

Wear my heart on my sleeve

...were all coined by William Shakespeare.

5.    Bored business people at conferences have fun with Cliché Bingo, ticking off the clichés as they roll off the boss’s tongue until someone shouts (or whispers) ‘House!’

6.    Bob’s your uncle – The original ‘Bob’ was Conservative Prime Minister Robert (Bob) Cecil who made an unpopular appointment of his nephew Arthur Balfour as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1900.

7.    A proper Charlie – meaning someone made to look a fool. The original ‘Charlie’ was the English jockey Charlie Smirke who name was used as Cockney rhyming slang for ‘berk’. But the story doesn’t start there; ‘berk’ was itself a shortening of ‘Berkley Hunt’, used by Cockneys as rhyming slang for a rather more offensive insult.

8.    What the Dickens...! has nothing to do with Charles Dickens – ‘dickens’ is an old name for the devil.

9.    But Dickens is responsible for giving us red tape meaning obstructive bureaucracy. 

10. A pig in a poke and Let the cat out of the bag both refer to the old country fair con of secretly switching a cat for a suckling pig before handing it over to the unsuspecting customer.

11. Pigs might fly probably has its origin in Lewis Carroll’s poem from Through the Looking Glass:

      'The time has come' the walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax, Of cabbages - and kings - And why the sea is boiling hot - And whether pigs have wings.'

12. Famous American producer Sam Goldwyn once demanded to ‘have some new clichés’.