Cliche

How to spell cliche

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cliche

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cliche mean?

1. nounA phrase or idea that has been used so often it has lost its freshness and impact.

Cliche in a sentence

• The speech was packed with every motivational cliche you could imagine.

• Calling the city a melting pot has become a tired cliche.

Where does cliche come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes straight from French, where cliché began as a printing term in the early nineteenth century. It was the past participle of the verb clicher, meaning 'to stereotype' or 'to make a metal printing plate', and the word is thought to imitate the clicking sound the molten metal made as it was poured into the mould to cast a fixed block of type. Because such a plate let printers reproduce the very same line of text over and over without resetting it, the figurative sense soon followed: a phrase or idea repeated so often that it has lost all freshness. English borrowed the word in the late 1800s and kept the French look, which is why the accented form cliché still appears; the unaccented spelling cliche is the simplified version that adults often default to. The same printing world gave English 'stereotype', which travelled an almost identical path from a casting process to a worn-out idea.

How the word is built

• cliche (whole word borrowed from French; originally the past participle of clicher, 'to stereotype, to cast in metal')