{"id":168,"date":"2005-07-29T02:24:48","date_gmt":"2005-07-29T02:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/when_is_a_clich\/"},"modified":"2005-07-29T02:24:48","modified_gmt":"2005-07-29T02:24:48","slug":"when_is_a_clich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/language\/when_is_a_clich\/","title":{"rendered":"When is a clich\u00e9 not a clich\u00e9?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onclick=\"window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=156,height=194,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\" href=\"http:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/.shared\/image.html?\/photos\/uncategorized\/catsuit.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"124\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/blog\/images\/catsuit.gif\" title=\"Catsuit\" alt=\"Catsuit\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;\" \/><\/a>So yesterday I&#8217;m reading an <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/slate.msn.com\/id\/2123412\/\">article<\/a> in <em>Slate<\/em> itemizing government idiocy, and I come across the following sentence:<\/p>\n<p><em>We are witnessing that rare occasion when the phrase &quot;I don&#8217;t know whether to laugh or cry&quot; can be uttered without lapsing into clich\u00e9.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Really? We are? <\/p>\n<p>Has the writer successfully avoided clich\u00e9 by couching a clich\u00e9 as he did? (My vote: No. The sentence is clumsy and hackish.)<\/p>\n<p>On a deeper note, can a clich\u00e9 ever not be a clich\u00e9?<\/p>\n<p>(Actually, I do recall one other rare occasion when the phrase &quot;I don&#8217;t know whether to laugh or cry&quot; could possibly have been uttered without lapsing into clich\u00e9. Years ago, in an attempt to manifest a version of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schrodingers_cat\">Schrodinger&#8217;s cat<\/a> thought experiment for a school science fair project, I locked a clown in a large wooden box. I arranged the triggering device so that it had a 50% chance of launching a cream pie at Hobo Jim&#8217;s face, and a 50% chance of hitting him with an exploding baby. [Not everyone is familiar with quantum mechanics, so here is some background: Pies in the face are funny. Gruesome infant fatality is horrendous.] Until I opened that box to witness the results, I truly did not know whether to laugh or cry. So I did both.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So yesterday I&#8217;m reading an article in Slate itemizing government idiocy, and I come across the following sentence: We are witnessing that rare occasion when the phrase &quot;I don&#8217;t know whether to laugh or cry&quot; can be uttered without lapsing into clich\u00e9. Really? We are? Has the writer successfully avoided clich\u00e9 by couching a clich\u00e9 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}