Cliché: looking for a needle in a haystack

Meaning: looking for the difficult-to-find. Origins and use examples.
Rewrite 1: looking for a thread in a ball of string
Rewrite 2: looking for a bullet in a lump of leadⁿ³
Rewrite 3: finding a sugar crystal in a salt shaker
Rewrite 4: finding a tear in an ocean
Comment: You might go for something less obvious, like finding a straw in a haystack. Some might think they’re one in the same, but they aren’t. Hay is a grass while straw is a grain.

More reading about clichés
What I found when I googled “clichés”:
• Berklee Shares: “Learn how to use line clichés to harmonize melodic phrases that are largely diatonic to a single key.” (music)

Note: By providing links to other websites I am only showing you what is out there about clichés – I am not endorsing any content or opinion expressed there.

Check out the searchable alphabetical list of all my cliché rewrites available in the archive list at the right.