Due to my last post I have discovered something that I cannot believe I didn’t know before. So cool.

We hear the words cliche and stereotype all the time. I’m pretty sure you know what they are – but just in case we’ll go over them again.

A cliche is a saying that has been so over-used as to lose its meaning and the impact it once had. While a stereotype is a commonly accepted ‘fact’ about a set of individuals or group of people.

I have an insatiable curiosity when it comes to language – so this is where it gets interesting for me.

A cliche was once a printing plate.

You see, letters were set one at a time and then cast in molten metal to create a ‘slug’. Phrases that were extremely common were cast as one slug which meant they didn’t have to be pieced together from individual words. So anytime that a phrase or a certain idea was commonly repeated verbatim – they would cast it as a one solid piece. This was a much quicker process. These complete phrases were called cliches – they also happened to be known as stereotypes.

After a time these technical terms made their way into everyday speech and we use them to this day!

Knowledge is a wonderful thing. Thank YOU Wikipedia.

P.S. Verbatim happens to be one of my favourite words (for some unfathomable reason) and I’m thrilled beyond belief that I managed to sneak it into this post.