Thursday, January 26, 2006

Cliché: put it on the back burner

(entered for 01.24.06)

Meaning: stopped working on it or gave it lower priority.
Use examples.
Rewrite 1: buried it deep in
storagen1b
Rewrite 2: moved from the oven to the freezer
Rewrite 3: put it back in its plastic packaging
Rewrite 4: locked it in a storage box and mailed myself the key by way of the
Amazon

Comment: In some of the rewrites, I put the emphasis on being out of circulation for a long time, such as “deep in storage” or “by way of the Amazon.” It’s probably more standard to simply take it out of circulation or set it aside without the lengthy wait.

More reading about clichés
What I found when I
googled “clichés”:
Clichés – Penguin Websites New Zealand: “Some clichés, dead metaphors and overworked expressions in business and government.”

Check out the new
alphabetical list of all my cliché rewrites available in the archive list at the right. To search the page using Internet Explorer, just go to “Edit” in the top menu bar, select “Find”, then enter the cliché or a word from it.

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