Cliché

How often have we come across the term cliché in the context of formulaic TV and cinema products across Hollywood, Bollywood and down south especially? It also gets under my skin when I hear someone overusing a pet remark like "last but not the least", "energetic and enthusiastic" or "love is blind" etc. A cliché to the core! Spoken as [ˈkliːʃeɪ] cliché is, according to its dictionary meaning, any overused idea which lacks an original thought. Today's trivia story is about how this French word cliché found its way into English dictionary. During the early days of printing press, large blocks of content were prepared and hit hard on the dye to make identical paper prints on mass scale. Think of a newspaper page perhaps. These blocks called 'stereotypes' (another technical term borrowed) made a clicking noise everytime they hit it. French word Cliché was hence used as a noun, for the blocks which were made 'to click'. Since it was a repititive process where the contents on a cliché remained fixed, today this word derives its contextual meaning from that very process.