Grammar: Clichés 11

 

For decades when describing buildings or cities, writers have used "sits" instead of "stands" or "lies". Give them their due, they may be trying to say "is sited".

A white geometric spire against a blue sky. A golden statue of an angle sits at the highest peak. (The angel is quite clearly standing on a sphere which is balanced on the point of the spire. You try sitting on that lot.)

What sits underneath St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Most are already more than familiar with the altar and baldachin of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome as well as the confessio that sits beneath of it. What they may not, however, be as familiar with is exactly just what sits beneath that, beyond what they can see with their own eyes. Today I thought it would be of interest to show a little bit of what, archeologically speaking, sits behind and beneath this, for there is a great deal more to it than meets the eye. (liturgicalartsjournal.com. Lies, lies, lies.)

Herakleia, founded in the Hellenistic period next to a Greco-Carian city under Mt Latmos, once sat on the ocean. (@AntiokhosE. Stood next to the sea?)

With the assembly rooms being scheduled for demolitions, what will happen to the original Jacobean ceiling that sits in the foyer? (How about “the foyer's original Jacobean ceiling”?)

An abandoned 22-story building in Lake Charles, Louisiana — damaged by hurricanes Laura and Delta — was imploded today after sitting vacant for nearly four years. (@Rainmaker1973. Buildings stand. Sometimes they stand vacant.)

One copy of Chesterton’s essay came to rest at Notre Dame, in Indiana, while another sat in the British Library on Euston Road in London. (Guardian. Reposed? Was housed?)


Can we stop using "trigger" to mean "cause"? The first trigger that is itself untriggered. Rebel without a trigger. It is the trigger, it is the trigger, my soul! Trigger was a character in Only Fools and Horses.

Likewise I wouldn't miss:

retard
broken
restored to its former glory (We know what "restored" means.)
hidden from prying eyes (We know what "hidden" means, too.)

Houses destroyed by tsunamis, typhoons, twisters, tornadoes and storms are always “reduced to matchwood”. How about splinters?

And dry forests "go up like a tinderbox". When did you last see one of those?

Why must myths be “exploded”? Couldn’t they be debunked sometimes?

April 2023: Journalists and commentators are using "banned" when formerly they'd have used "dropped" or "scrapped". When a new government comes in, they "scrap" the previous regime's policies. At the same time the cliché is: “I don’t like banning things”.

Tensions are rising in Moldova and Transnistria. (Increasing. Presumably they mean “getting more tense”.)

Survivors are pulled or hauled from wreckage.

Under the watchful eye of...

A writer-in to the Observer complains that people have recently started overusing “incredible”.
Someone else moans about “just last week”, claiming that it should be “only last week”. Mike Nichol adds: Jonathan Bouquet’s article reassured me that I am not alone in railing against the tsunami of clichés that now creates daily a perfect storm of verbal garbage. It is surely not rocket science for journalists and broadcasters to draw a line in the sand and embargo phrases now well beyond their sell-by date.

However, "When did people suddenly start using the expression..." is the expected intro for this kind of moan.

Neil Fisher (@nfmusic) asks journalists if they could possibly avoid the word “maestro” for conductor in captions, headlines and standfirsts.


Rich people always have “deep pockets”, never “bulging handbags”,  or even “fat wallets”. And the government are still keeping their gold sovereigns in large wooden boxes, or "coffers". But it’s all contactless these days.

Beautiful people, especially men, are always talked of as having “cheekbones”, even if theirs aren’t particularly prominent.

mired in (Or, still worse, "marred in". I get1,680 results for “marred in civil war”, 2,660 for “marred in debt”. Writers should go out and walk in some mire and get their boots dirty. "Mired in" means "stuck in the mud", and to "mar" is to "spoil".)

When we talk about women and girls’ sports, do we have to use the word “dream”? Likewise in the context of women becoming scientists, astronauts etc.

When writing a resignation letter, the disgraced politician always claims he doesn’t want to be a “distraction” from the government’s magnificent and high-minded project.

Any department called “something studies” (cultural, women’s, black, media) has a lefty slant and teaches students to deconstruct all phenomena (“texts”) looking for subliminal messages left by capitalism to induce false consciousness – I mean, unspoken assumptions about gender, hierarchy, empire, capitalism, turning people and things into commodities etc.

Music reviews of the early 80s all referred to “swirling” synths and “chiming” guitars.

When did the violins of empathy become tiny? They were originally full-sized violins played by street musicians who specialised in tear-jerking tunes like Roses in Picardie or Hearts and Flowers. They became a metaphor for maudlin bids for sympathy, and you hummed the tune while miming playing the instrument.

More here, and links to the rest.

Mired in a slough