I love this definition from Wikipedia:
In printing, a cliché was a printing plate cast from movable
type. This is also called a stereotype. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase
used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. "Cliché" came to mean such a
ready-made phrase. The French word "cliché" comes from the sound made
when the matrix is dropped into molten metal to
make a printing plate.
To save time and money, then, printers took common phrases and...
Published on February 16, 2010 02:26