Cliché: in the clear

Meaning: blameless or innocent (example 1)(example 2)


Rewrite 1: passed clean suspect inspection
Rewrite 2: traveling barrier-free
Rewrite 3: the fog surrounding you has lifted
Rewrite 4: the dark cloud hovering over you just rained out
Rewrite 5: the trash talk has shifted to somebody else


Comment: There is an other use for this idiom related to cashflow, but all the references I found online were to blamelessness.


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Cliché: in the cards, it's

Meaning: predicatble (example, scroll down), predicted (example)


Rewrite: Swami has fortold it
Rewrite: I found it in the Bible Code
Rewrite: you will find it in the star charts
Rewrite: I knew it! I could have run the table on it!
Rewrite: it was known before they shuffled the cards


Comment: This is more about foreknowledge than predictability.


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Cliché: in on the ground floor

Meaning: involved from the beginning (example)


Rewrite 1: in at the lobby level
Rewrite 2: entering before the crowd arrives
Rewrite 3: begin where everything is "up"
Rewrite 4: start with the hand-over of the keys
Rewrite 5: Getting to 60 from zero


Comment: The last one was inspired by Top Gear (UK), which I was watching at the time.


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Cliché: in harm's way

Meaning: making yourself available to be harmed (example)


Rewrite 1: in harm's glide path
Rewrite 2: on harm's playground
Rewrite 3: on harm-friendly grounds
Rewrite 4: playing on harm's turf
Rewrite 5: right where harm wants you


Comment: There was plenty of room to work using just harm as the central keyword, but I'd like to see what you might come up with for words other than harm.


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Writing about crime
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Cliché: I'm not getting any younger

Meaning: impatience; literally, I'm getting old waiting for you (example)


Rewrite: you take so long, my wrinkles are getting bigger than my boobs
Rewrite: I'm on my second pair of dentures waiting for you
Rewrite: the seasons seem to come and go with you
Rewrite: you might think I'm looking for dirt under my nails; I'm actually watching them grow
Rewrite: my alarm clock is having a nervous breakdown over here


Comment: Is it me, or does this sound like Billy Crystal playing the old man saying these lines? It isn't intentional. Maybe it's because the original idiom is kind of a punch line, anyway.


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Use humor in your writing
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Cliché: bet dollars to doughnuts, I'll

Meaning: bet something of significance against something less significant (example)


Rewrite: bet dollars to dimes
Rewrite: bet hub caps to lug nuts
Rewrite: bet Cadillacs to Yugos
Rewrite: bet screws to glue sticks
Rewrite: bet gallons to pints
Rewrite: bet trees to saplings


Comment: There's present here a confidence that you're betting something of higher value against something of lesser value because you're going to win.


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Just what do those idioms mean?
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Cliché: if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times

Meaning: frustration at having to repeat something too often (example)


Rewrite 1: I must be in an echo chamber, I'm saying it again!
Rewrite 2: I could swear I've heard me say this before
Rewrite 3: Let me say it for the thousand-and-first time...
Rewrite 4: maybe you didn't hear it the first thousand times
Rewrite 5: I've said this hundreds of times already, but let me repeat one last time for effect


Comment: There's a lot of sarcasm present in these rewrites, perhaps because the original is so close to stating the case with only some exaggeration. Can you say this in a meaningful way without sarcasm?


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Some writing calls for sarcasm

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Cliché: ice water in his veins

Meaning: cold reserve such that nothing bothers him (example)


Rewrite 1: Arctic water in his veins
Rewrite 2: glacier runoff in his arteries
Rewrite 3: cold beer in his pipes
Rewrite 4: refrigerator coolant in his lungs
Rewrite 5: running on freezing rain and hailstones
Rewrite 6: oozes smoothies through his heart


Comment: I'm thinking very cold and very slow to excite.


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Getting back to nature
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Cliché: hump day

Meaning: Wednesday, day mid-week that gets you over the "hump" (example)


Rewrite 1: camel back day
Rewrite 2: road bump day
Rewrite 3: leaf pile day
Rewrite 4: Bell Curve day
Rewrite 5: high jump day
Rewrite 6: leap frog day


Comment: At first I thought of other kinds of humps or bumps or piles you get over, then I thought of obstacles you go over to get to the other side. There are lots of creative ways to say "I'm half way over the week."


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For when you run out of words
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Cliché: get into hot water

Meaning: get into trouble (example)


Rewrite: gulp hot coffee
Rewrite: dive into boiling water
Rewrite: skinny dip in a scalding pool
Rewrite: ride some white water
Rewrite: cross a river at a deep spot


Comment: There are lots of ways to use water as a metaphor for getting into trouble and I've attempted to use some of them here.


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How they might say it at sea

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Cliché: hot enough to fry an egg

Meaning: ambient or surface temperature is extreme


Rewrite 1: hot enough to steam an egg
Rewrite 2: hot enough to fry a burger
Rewrite 3: hot enough to grill a cheese sandwich
Rewrite 4: hot enough to broil a steak
Rewrite 5: hot enough to melt steel
Rewrite 6: so hot you could prep s'mores on the sidewalk!


Comment: It's usually said to indicate how hot a surface is, such as a sidewalk or car hood, but it could also apply to how hot the air is or how hot the day is.


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More about food and drink in speech
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Cliché: happy holidays

Whatever faith or tradition is dear to you, may you experience the joy of this special season. Merry Christmas. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Festivus. Although "happy holidays" has become a cliché in many ways, it is always meant to express wishes for a time of joy in a spirit of good will. 


May peace, good will, and joy be yours now and into the coming new year.


Alan Eggleston (Wordsworth) and family
"How to Slay a Cliché"

Cliché: horsing around

Meaning: improper, unruly behavior (example)


Rewrite 1: making like caged monkeys
Rewrite 2: running with the fools
Rewrite 3: bouncing around like cage fighters on sugar
Rewrite 4: careening around like a European road rally driver
Rewrite 5: having a Black Friday freak-out


Comment: I always associated this idiom with playful unruliness, but I can see it getting out-of-hand and becoming more destructive, so I've attempted to treat the various degrees of unruliness here. Feel free to take it to whatever extreme you need to fit your need. 


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A little horse sense with idioms
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Cliché: hook, line, and sinker

Meaning: completely (example)


Rewrite 1: bait, line, and switch
Rewrite 2: site, link, and virus
Rewrite 3: hook, line, and spam
Rewrite 4: text, headline, and disclaimer
Rewrite 5: spine, cover, and pages
Rewrite 6: cereal, box, and special offer


Comment: Although in usage this usually takes on the connotation of "being had," it can also have the more denotative meaning of "getting it all." I tried to cover both here.


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The art of the sell
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Cliché: hit the nail on the head

Meaning: to be exact (example)


Rewrite 1: hit the thumb on the nail
Rewrite 2: slotted the screw square
Rewrite 3: fed the thread through the needle, first try
Rewrite 4: pinned the tail on the donkey square on the ass
Rewrite 5: walked a line so fine even a tailor couldn't stitch cleaner




Comment: This one was a challenge, thinking of other ways to express manual exactitude. What did I miss?


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Making it easier to talk carpentry metaphors
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Cliché: hit the hay, to

Meaning: go to bed (example)


Rewrite 1: hit the bale
Rewrite 2: hit the mattress
Rewrite 3: cuddle with the pillows
Rewrite 4: ruffle the linens
Rewrite 5: snuggle in z's
Rewrite 6: join the bed buds


Comment: I went for more colloquial wording here.


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Write more picturesquely
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Cliché: hit below the belt, to

Meaning: hurtful, unfair hit (example 1, example 2)


Rewrite 1: going for the groin
Rewrite 2: nuking the no-hit zone
Rewrite 3: knock-out punch between the side pockets
Rewrite 4: aiming for the target of last resort
Rewrite 5: landing one that will make everyone wince 


Comment: This interpretation favors the end-product or area versus the intention. How would you rewrite it differently to suggest someone is intentionally dealing unfairly?


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How to play fair in everyday living

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Cliché: the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing

Meaning: lack of coordination (example)


Rewrite 1: the left hand and right hand refuse to shake
Rewrite 2: the left hand and right hand aren't talking
Rewrite 3: the left hand is signing Latin, the right hand is signing Greek
Rewrite 4: the left hand is lost and the right hand won't ask for directions
Rewrite 5: the left side of the brain doesn't know what the right side of the brain is thinking
Rewrite 6: the cows don't know what the horses are doing



Comment: The last one kind of comes out of left field, but I wanted something different that still illustrated the point.

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Bringing the hands together

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Cliché: his bark is worse than his bite

Meaning: not as big a threat as they sound (example 1, example 2)


Rewrite 1: its growl is worse than its pounce
Rewrite 2: his scream is worse than his karate chop
Rewrite 3: her silence is worse than her slap
Rewrite 4: her threat is worse than her payback
Rewrite 5: the "crack" is worse than the wound


Comment: This covers a wide assortment of situations, evolving from a dog, to a cat, to a Ninja, to a scorned woman, to an angered competitor, to a gun.


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(book reference removed)

Cliché: hindsight is 20-20

Meaning: better seen after the fact (example) 


Rewrite 1: rear-view vision is 20-20
Rewrite 2: hindsight is keener vision
Rewrite 3: foreseen with perfect hindsight
Rewrite 4: seen with the precision of past experience
Rewrite 5: this time you'd do it with prescience
Rewrite 6: rose tinted glasses have nothing on lenses calibrated for the past

Comment: This one was immeasurably harder to rewrite than I imagined. How would you rewrite it?


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Revising fiction
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