What’s in a Cliche?

Ax to Grind

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This clichéd phrase is often attributed to the statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin, who wrote a story called “Too Much for Your Whistle.” In it, Franklin describes the way in which a boy is persuaded to sharpen an ax by a man who pretends e cannot operate the grindstone.

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Although he introduced the idea, Franklin did not actually use the phrase “an ax to grind.” The first to do so was probably the editor and congress-man Charles Miner. In a piece entitled “Who’ll Turn Grindstones?” which was published in a Pennsylvania newspaper, the Lucerne Federalist, on September 7, 1810, Miner retold a story from his childhood, when, as in Franklin’s tale, he was flattered into grinding an ax for a man but received no payment or thanks. Henceforth, noted Miner, “when I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter – thinks I, that man has an ax to grind.”

The Best-Laid Schemes of Mice and Men

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The full version appears in the 1785 poem “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns (“Gang aft a–gley” in the second line below means “often go awry.”)

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men

Gang aft a-gley;

An’ lea’e us nought but grief and plain,

For promis’d joy.

The Female of the Species is Deadlier than the Male

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Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Female of the Species” contained the following lines:

When the Himalayan peasant meets the

he-bear in his pride,

He shouts to scare the monster, who

will often turn aside.

But the she-bear thus accosted rends the

peasant tooth and nail,

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

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Gone with the Wind

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In Le Complainte Rutebeuf, the 13th century French poet Rutebeuf remarks:

Friendship is dead:

They were friends, who go with the wind,

And the wind was blowing at my door.

The phrase “gone with the wind” became cliché, of course, after Margaret Mitchell published her romantic Civil War novel in 1936. The book became a best-seller, and the film version, released in 1939, won 10 Academy Awards.

Hell Hath no Fury like a Woman Scorned

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John Fletched and Colley Cibber were among several 17th century English dramatists who wrote pays that included similar sentiments. But it was William Congreve who, in his extremely popular tragedy of 1697, The Mourning Bride, wrote the lines that included a phrase that soon entered the language as a cliché.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,

Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

Hold the Fort

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“Hold the fort! I am coming!” was the message Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman sent from Kennesaw Mountain to Gen. John Murray Corse at nearby Allatoma, Georgia, during a Civil War battle in October 1864. “Hold the fort” was later popularized as the title of a religious song in a compilation published in 1874.

In the Doghouse

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In James Barrie’s famous play Peter Pan (1904), the irascible Mr. Darling punishes the dog-nursemaid, Nana. As a result, the darling children – Wendy, John, and Michael – leave home. As a penance, Mr. Darling lives in the doghouse until the children return. Mr. Darling was based on Arthur Llewelyn Davies, the real-life father of the boys on whom Barrie’s Newfoundland dog, Luath.

Keeping up with the Joneses

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A comic strip called “Keeping Up With the Joneses,” by the cartoonist Arthur R. Momand, was first syndicated in U.S. newspapers in 1913. Momand originally wanted to entitle it “Keeping Up With the Smiths,” but he decided on Joneses just before the strip was to appear. Publication ceased in 1931, at the peak of the Depression. But the cliché lives on.

Mad as a Hatter

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Lewis Carroll may have popularized the phrase, but it was already a widely used cliché before the Mad Hatter made his appearance in Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland (1865). In 1836 Nova Scotia-born Thomas Haliburton, in The Clockmaker, referred to someone being “as mad as a hatter,” and William Makepeace Thackeray used the phrase in his novel Pendennis (1850).

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A variety of explanation have been put forward for the origin of the cliché: that it derives from “mad as an adder” (as dangerous or poisonous as a snake); that hatters were traditionally driven mad by the effect of poisoning by the mercurous oxide used in the process of felt tanning; or that it refers to a particular 17th century English mad hatter, Robert Crab.

Throw the Baby out with the Bathwater

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This cliché was probably originated by George Bernard Shaw, who used the same image several times. For example, in his Pen Portraits and Reviews in 1909 he wrote: “Like all reactionists, he usually empties the baby out with the bath.”

Variety is the Spice of Life

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In The Time-piece, the second book of his six-volume epic nature poem, The Task, published in 1785, William Cowper included the lines:

Variety’s the very spice of life,

That gives it all its flavor.