Learning English with cliches!

Do you know what a cliche is? Cliche is actually a french word and we can use it just the same way in Potuguese. But in the case you haven't grasped it yet, a cliche is an overused phrase which can be considered very annoying at times because it's too obvious, too repetitive, you see everybody saying them. A cliche can have both literate and figurative meanings, unlike idioms which always mean something else than the literal words. I've found a list of some of the most known cliches in English language which inspite of being considered overused by so many, can also be very useful in our english studies. It's up to you whether you'll use them ot not. What you can't choose is whether you want to hear them or not, because you surely will.

Before we touch on our first cliche, let's do what we always do here on this blog: create a situation. Suppose for example your friend's neglected his job, missed a lot of meetings or even refused to do certain extra things at work. You're very sure that by this point he's very close to losing his job and you want to alert him about it. So you say: If you don't improve your performance, they'll fire you. Can't you see the writing on the wall? The writing on the wall means something that is about to happen, something that is obvious. When you can't see the writing on the wall, you get burned really bad because it's always a bad thing.

Now imagine that someone in your family has just divorced. You're very confused because you actually thought the couple was happily married since they always seemed to get along really well in family meetings. Now you feel like you need to satisfy your curiosity about what happened to this couple that made them considerate the divorce as the only solution. While asking one of your relatives about the reasons, he tells you: Remember curiosity killed the cat. You should just forget about it. When you tell somebody curiosity killed the cat, you're saying not to be too inquisitive because it can be dangerous.

And since we're already talking about cats, it's impossible not to remember of one of the most overused cliches: A cat has nine lives. When you use that cliche to refer to cats literally, you're just remembering the fact that cats can survive things that are severe enough to kill them. Like when you see a cat being hit by a car and just walking away. The thing is, when you use that cliche with people, it means that someone might be having problems now, but there are so many things to do well or succeed. For example: Suppose your friend's career is having its ups and downs. Actually it's always been that way. One day it's alright, but the next day he's a hair's breadth away from getting fired. In that situation, you can say: His career reminds me that a cat has nine lives.

There are actually too many cliches we could go over right now, but I'm going to leave you with only those ones for now. I hope you liked it. See you next time!