We should consign these trite phrases to dustbin of history
Copies of Oxford Advanced Learner's dictionary. PHOTO | PHOEBE OKALL | FILE |
What you need to know:
- While using recycled figures of speech and irritating clichés in your prose, you are saying that you are comfortable with them because it allows you to forgo thinking.
- In some cases, these chickens come home to roost only when you go laughing all the way to the bank with other people’s money.
On the whole, I’m a somewhat easy-going sort of bloke when it comes to appreciating how other people use the English language.
It is not our native language after all, and we all suffer from moments of self-doubt if not inferiority complex when it comes to the use of its idioms and turns of phrase. But my patience wears thin when people write the most banal things with great pomposity, not caring a bit what they are saying.
I’ll be the first to admit that language use is a matter of personal preference, and if the average readers have no problem with hackneyed phrases scattered all over the page, it is within their rights.
They have probably been conditioned by some ill-trained hacks to believe that the easiest way to communicate is to use tired old expressions.
IRRITATING CLICHES
The problem is that while using recycled figures of speech and irritating clichés in your prose, you are essentially saying that you are comfortable with them because it allows you to forgo thinking. As a writer, you need to think hard and pick only those words and phrases that will convey your exact meaning. This is not easy to do.
Let us list just a few of the linguistic irritants that come immediately to mind. Incidentally, here I am addressing those users who live in the real world and not those who inhabit the digital world. The latter have their distinct language with its own grammar, syntax and spelling, and it morphs practically every day leaving the rest of us floundering.
VOGUE
In the meantime, learning to communicate in English “is not exactly rocket science”. In fact, “it’s a no-brainer”. I have no idea where these two expressions sprung from but if they had currency in their time, they no longer evoke much resonance with the reader.
In the 1950s when it was in vogue, rocket science must have been the most difficult of subjects to learn, but now we should give it a rest as a figure of speech.
After all, we are in the 21st century. As for the “no-brainer” thing, the less said about it, the better. It’s simply ugly.
The other expression which should have, by now, lost every right to live but is still a favourite with many especially when attacking the government is: “Stop burying your head in the sand”. This figure of speech apparently originated from the supposed habit of ostriches, when cornered, to assume that if it cannot see its enemies, they too can’t see it.
USED SPARINGLY
Nobody has actually proved the truth of this, but since it is rather pointless to question an ostrich on the issue, we will probably never know. This expression too, should be used sparingly.
The same goes for expressions like “laughing all the way to the bank” when one has made an especially good business deal or won a lottery, and “the chickens have finally come home to roost” when all your evil deeds eventually catch up with you and it’s time for retribution.
In some cases, these chickens come home to roost only when you go laughing all the way to the bank with other people’s money. Whatever the case, these idiomatic expressions, aphorisms and bromides, should all be “consigned to the dustbin of history”.
FLABBERGASTED
On a more serious note, I recently came across this gem of a news story in a reputable newspaper and was flabbergasted.
“A Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) Examination candidate was allegedly stabbed to death by his wife in Ikuu Village, Meru County.”
I could not believe it. In the course of the story, the body was carted off to a mortuary, and so poor chap was actually murdered and it was not an allegation after all.
So why did the correspondent have any doubts?
The answer is simple. Either he was too lazy to think, or he wanted to cover his ass just in case it happened the wife was not the actual killer, hence the use of the word “allegedly”.
Of course he could have merely wanted to spare the woman the ignominy of being identified as a murderer, but the moment he described the victim as a married examination candidate and identified the village, there was nothing left to hide.
In short, the word “allegedly” meant nothing at all. This is a very slovenly and dangerous way of reporting news.
