“You’ll meet someone when you least expect it.” This, frankly bizarre, nugget of wisdom gets thrown at all single people. If you’re taking a shower alone at midnight in a locked bathroom, surely this might qualify as a ‘least expect it’ moment? Did my future bride bob up from the U-bend and declare her amorous intent? Sadly not.
“He’s hit it with his favoured left foot.” how many left feet does he have?
What are your favourite clichés?
Does the Pope shit in the woods.
“You’ll know when you’ve made the right decision”
– this always puzzled me, it doesn’t help you make the decision but it makes more sense after you’ve made the decision
..and of course you could still be completely wrong and only find out some time later.
‘It’s always in the last place you look.’ Well yes, because I stop looking once I’ve found whatever it is.
Also, if you just gave up looking, it wouldn’t be in the last place you looked.
It ain’t over til it’s over
The one I find most useful as it cuts short the hand-wringing is ‘we are where we are’
Similarly, “It is what it is.”
You are what you is.
I’m not.
You is what you am.
It doesn’t, and you can’t.
It won’t and it don’t.
It hasn’t, it isn’t, it even ain’t.
…And it shouldn’t… it couldn’t!
“It is what it is”
Usually when a colleague/superior has royally fucked up and is hastily trying to deflect your rage. Normally followed by a “Let’s move on”
“You are what you eat.”
Doesn’t that make me a cannibal?
Be careful – I eat cannibals.
It’s incredible!
It makes me a rather large bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.
Everything happens for a reason.
Sorry, but I have no belief in a cosmic plan.
I particularly loathe “I turned round & said”.
Nobody has ever turned round to speak to me
(well, nobody with clothes on…)
Fond of locker-room banter, eh?
The unique speech of Sports Journalists/Commentators.
If we describe the history of Man Utd, for example, in the 2000s they will refer to players in the first person I would assume…but no!
We get “Your Wayne Rooneys, Gary Nevilles” are the future of this club
There was only one of them!
“It’s like I was saying”
Ugh!
‘Saved by the woodwork’ when a shot hits the post or crossbar….no they weren’t, the shot narrowly missed the target.
It’s worse than that. They use the awful phrase ‘the frame of the goal’ these days. Sets my teeth on edge.
“All good things come to an end”. And bad things. All things, eventually. Even time. (Discuss)
So it’s true then!? Bugger…..
“Time is/is not on your side”.
Fake news!
Alternative facts.
The politicians’ description of people being “hard working…”
As a Viz correspondent once said, what about us lazy bastards?
Yes, I hate that too. Do NZ politicians use it? In the UK, I think it’s an extension of the wilfully divisive skivers and strivers narrative. I wish more people would get on their bikes and read Bertrand Russell’s ‘In Praise of Idleness’.
I think “ordinary, decent…” has bitten the dust however. Everyone knows it was a euphemism for tidy-haired white heterosexuals in cardigans.
I like the Monty Python sketch on one of their records, where they’re doing an “Any Questions?” type show and Michael Palin plays one of the audience. Goes something like:
“I believe that the vast majority of right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that that the vast majority of ordinary decent people are fed up with being sick and tired”.
You kind of have to read it with Michael Gove’s voice in your head. Sorry about that.
Yes @martin-hairnet they do. The recent election even had the dreaded “Strong and Stable” phrase a few times.
I think Gordon Brown was the first notable politician to sue this particular cliché and it was one of the few things David Cameron and George Osborne retained from the Labour years.
I don’t have any favourite cliches. I avoid them like the plague.
I wouldn’t touch them with our bargepole.
Well, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Honestly?
At the moment:
“That can happen.”
“It depends who you ask.”
“You will need . . . ”
At the moment none of these is causing Mrs never to become agitated due to overuse.
However the senior dog is probably fed up with:
“You know you want to really.”
“The smartest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
The smartest trick the banking sector ever pulled was convincing the world Capitalism isn’t a religion.
I don’t know what the non-Scottish equivalent of this is, but it’s always riled me: ‘ What’s for ye’ll no go by ye’ (literally, if something is destined to go right for you it won’t pass you by). Grr. Stupid illogical belief in a cosmic plan.
“Perception is reality…” – no it isn’t.
Looking forward
Let’s head ’em off at the pass…
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch”. If I had a hot dinner for every time I heard that …
You’d be very overweight.