Whether it's the "Pow!" of Batman punching somebody in the face or the "Whop!" of somebody punching Batman in the face, onomatopoeias are everywhere in our culture. They're a fundamental building block of all language, and it's easy to see why: Simply transcribing a sound is the most straightforward, logical way to coin a new word for an unfamiliar thing. But sound and transcription are both very subjective things, so for every blockbuster classic like "bonk," there are 10 more words you use every day that you had no idea were onomatopoeias, because, well, they're kind of dumb. Kind of dumb like these!

10 Cliche

What it means:

A trite and overused phrase. Like "A dark and stormy night" or "Time heals all wounds" or "Did you drink all my nail polisher remover?"

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What the hell is it supposed to sound like?

The forging of a metal printing press plate.

Getty

Above: Either a printing press or some form of ancient torture device.

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Huh?

The word "cliche" doesn't derive from any Latin word or even any prior French word. Actually, as legend has it, a group of printers back in 1800s France got the idea to save time by forging common phrases onto a single plate instead of writing out every line of text word-by-word. In English, these plates are referred to as stereotypes.

Wikipedia

"Cliche" is the word you hallucinate when you sleep with too many people's wives and disparage their countries, France.

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So when you utter a cliche, you're saying something that is so unoriginal that there's actually a prepared mold to represent it. And when you unjustly "stereotype" a person or race, what you're really doing is "forging them onto a French printing press plate." You monster.