The Return of the Chronicle of Cliche: Peter King

It's been a long time since we've chronicled any cliches, but Peter King's latest MMQB is so full of them we have to resurrect it...er, bring it back to life...er, do it again. Remember, In "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell's first rule of good English usage is "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print." We consider it worth the effort to chronicle the overused metaphors of particularly bad writers.

As usual, we're focusing on overused cliches, so we ignore basic overused idioms (such as "face it" or "there's no end in sight") and we ignore metaphoric language that shows some creativity. We chronicle overused metaphors, and Peter King gives us plenty.

"buck the trend" (King will not, however, buck any trend involving a cliche).

"take the pulse of"

"Worked like a charm"

"can stand toe-to-toe with"

"My NFC darkhorse" (Are there real darkhorses? Were there ever?)

"go out on a limb"

"brain drain"

"they have the linebacking backbone"

"Memo to" (Memo to aspiring writers: the phrase "memo to" is a hackneyed cliche).

"calling you every name in the book"

"you sounded like a sledgehammer"

"beating this dogfighting rap."

"I'd bet you a lot of money that"

"pulled the trigger on"

"will be as Herculean a task" (I'm starting to feel that chronicling King's cliches is an Herculean task).

"pushing aside the mountain of stuff they have on their plates" (they have metaphorical mountains on their metaphorical plates. We're quite removed from direct language here).

"the entrepreneurial spirit will be alive" (Is the entrepreneurial spirit any relation to the spirit of fantasy football?)

"some deep-pocketed people"

"It's a heck of a hill to climb"

"If he had let it die"

"a no-harm, no-foul incident"

"I guess I should have a scintilla of interest in Cleveland-San Antonio, but I don't." (I've never heard the word "scintilla" used outside of hyperbole. It's usually only used, as King uses it, to say that there is not even a scintilla. I don't hear people speak of actual scintillas, whatever they may be, but only the absence of scintillas).

"the occasional 163-158 Nets-Suns barnburner" (A barn burner like Abner Snopes?)

"this sea-change."

Overuse of metaphor is a sure sign of a lazy, uncreative, or bad writer. Overuse of criticism of overuse of metaphor is, without a doubt, a sure sign of a prickly English professor.