Familiarity breeds cliches

The difference between originality and cliche is familiarity. Those expressions we think of as cliches are that only because we have heard them so many times before. The first time we heard them, they probably seemed clever.

This occurs to me while browsing through Happy as a Clam, a collection of similes more than 200 pages long complied in the 1990s by Larry Wright, an owner of a bed and breakfast along the Mississippi River who obviously had lots of time on his hands.

Take the expression "good as gold" as an example. A cliche? Yes, indeed. But it probably wasn't back in the 19th century when Charles Dickens put it in one of his books. How about "easy as falling off a log"? I'll bet it was thought original and amusing when Mark Twain first used it. Twain also wrote "easy as playing hooky," which may still sound amusing to us because we probably haven't heard it as often.

As for "happy as a clam," that is apparently so old that Wright couldn't find anyone to attribute it to. "Happy as a lark" goes back to Anne Bronte. Other similes may seem better to us, in part, because they less familiar: "happy as a new millionaire" (Margaret Mitchell), "happy as a pig eating pancakes," "happy as a kid with a new astronaut suit," "happy as a fly in a molasses factory," "happy as a lizard on a sun-washed rock" (Dean Koontz).

"Read him like a book" is now hopelessly cliched. But not "read him like a fifty-foot 'See Rock City' sign" (Robert R. McCammon). McCammon, the author of horror novels, pops up often in this book, an indication not just of McCammon's gift for clever similes but also Wright's reading taste. Both Stephen King and Dean Koontz are also well-represented here. King has given us "hard as trying to swallow a doorknob," "glared at each other like motorists with tangled cars" and "useless as talking to an empty cat food can."

Short similes, such as "happy as a clam," seem more likely to turn into cliches, simply because they are easy to remember and repeat (even if we have no idea why a clam would be happy). Meanwhile, "rear end as wide as a bank president's desk," also by Stephen King, will probably always bring a smile because it is too long to repeat endlessly.