variants
also cliches
as in tropes
an idea or expression that has been used by many people
try to write a love story without resorting to well-worn clichés
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
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Recent Examples of clichés
Every Mother’s Day, politicians spout cliches celebrating all that moms do for our families.
—
Nicole Varma, The Orlando Sentinel, 9 May 2026
The workforce warnings, in particular, are getting louder, with a mix of smart alerts and a cacophony of cliches.
—Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Fortune, 29 Apr. 2026
There’s a reason for the myriad cliches in baseball.
—Gabriel Burns, AJC.com, 15 Apr. 2026
Matching furniture sets and too-small rugs are living room cliches to avoid.
—Sarah Lyon, The Spruce, 13 Apr. 2026
The dialogue is overladen with snicker-worthy cliches, a swelling, melodramatic soundtrack that doesn’t match the mood, dubious cameos and plastic, perfunctory life-affirming quotes.
—Randy Myers, Mercury News, 11 Mar. 2026
Playing to the occasion Time for some of the cliches.
—Thom Harris, New York Times, 7 Mar. 2026
Hedda’s romantic picture — of Lovborg dying magnificently, with Dionysian vine leaves in his hairs, from a bullet of one of her own guns — smacks of the same literary cliches that has Emma fantasizing about a torchlight wedding at midnight.
—Theater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 25 Feb. 2026
Lines can be set for how many political cliches Trump uses, the number of interruptions from the audience, the total times a person is shown on camera, etc.
—James Powel, USA Today, 24 Feb. 2026
Nicole Varma, The Orlando Sentinel, 9 May 2026
The workforce warnings, in particular, are getting louder, with a mix of smart alerts and a cacophony of cliches.
—Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Fortune, 29 Apr. 2026
There’s a reason for the myriad cliches in baseball.
—Gabriel Burns, AJC.com, 15 Apr. 2026
Matching furniture sets and too-small rugs are living room cliches to avoid.
—Sarah Lyon, The Spruce, 13 Apr. 2026
The dialogue is overladen with snicker-worthy cliches, a swelling, melodramatic soundtrack that doesn’t match the mood, dubious cameos and plastic, perfunctory life-affirming quotes.
—Randy Myers, Mercury News, 11 Mar. 2026
Playing to the occasion Time for some of the cliches.
—Thom Harris, New York Times, 7 Mar. 2026
Hedda’s romantic picture — of Lovborg dying magnificently, with Dionysian vine leaves in his hairs, from a bullet of one of her own guns — smacks of the same literary cliches that has Emma fantasizing about a torchlight wedding at midnight.
—Theater Critic, Los Angeles Times, 25 Feb. 2026
Lines can be set for how many political cliches Trump uses, the number of interruptions from the audience, the total times a person is shown on camera, etc.
—James Powel, USA Today, 24 Feb. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for clichés
Noun
-
Some, but not all, of those tropes are present in Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s behind-the-scenes drama The Beloved (El Ser Querido), which manages to add a few welcome twists to the formula.—
Jordan Mintzer,
HollywoodReporter,
16 May 2026
-
And the undoing of the normative tropes of, like, Sex is this act that starts with foreplay and ends with the male climax!—
Rachel Handler,
Vulture,
14 May 2026
Noun
-
Most leaders can’t afford to wait weeks for insights that could inform their next move, and can revert to relying on generalizations to guide them as a result.—
Alex Cooper,
Fortune,
16 May 2026
-
There’s a false perception in pop music that the best way to connect with the masses is to keep things broad — that vague generalizations are easier for people to latch onto.—
Larisha Paul,
Rolling Stone,
2 May 2026
Noun
-
Taiwan Beneath all the platitudes, there are still some simmering tensions.—
Selina Wang,
ABC News,
14 May 2026
-
The lyrics—elsewhere evocative—wilt dramatically, a slurry of platitudes.—
Linnie Greene,
Pitchfork,
29 Apr. 2026
Noun
-
The play isn’t subtle; the final sequence leans hard on truisms about addiction and trauma, which are affecting but overly explicit.—
Sheldon Pearce,
New Yorker,
20 Feb. 2026
-
One of the truisms in the past for Team Canada at some best-on-best events is needing a few games to find its game.—
Pierre LeBrun,
New York Times,
12 Feb. 2026
Noun
-
One effect of this austerity and repression is to focus attention on Albee’s language, with its slippery banalities and barbs.—
Steven Winn,
San Francisco Chronicle,
3 Apr. 2026
-
As far back as the Victorian era, exchanging a few banalities was part of a veritable social code—a way of signaling both politeness and boundaries.—
Jeanne Ballion,
Vogue,
27 Dec. 2025
Noun
-
Not stereotypes, but tropes flipped on their head, and the sense of where positions and relationships lie, and then how characters just fall beautifully into that and adjust to that, especially Tucker, is gonna be fun to explore.—
Dessi Gomez,
Deadline,
14 May 2026
-
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that Neanderthals — our closest extinct human relatives — were cognitively and psychologically more similar to modern humans than previously thought, rather than the simple-minded, brutish cavemen of earlier stereotypes.—
Ashley Strickland,
CNN Money,
13 May 2026
Noun
-
While these songs might appear to be somewhat straightforward EBM that wear their politics on their latex sleeve, there’s a level of ambiguity at work that moves Kissing Luck Goodbye past its own bromides and into deeper artistic territory.—
Sadie Sartini Garner,
Pitchfork,
16 Apr. 2026
-
Disruption without construction Instructors burned out with the current situation endure a barrage of repetitive bromides.—
ArsTechnica,
ArsTechnica,
13 Apr. 2026
Noun
-
In the medieval town of Belvì, men roast chestnuts—marroni—over an open fire in a frying pan the size of a swimming pool and then serve them to the crowd by shoveling them into troughs.—
IEEE Spectrum,
IEEE Spectrum,
7 May 2026
-
Canned Water Chestnuts Fresh water chestnuts, while hard to find, are sweeter and juicier than canned varieties, with a cleaner, more pronounced crunch.—
Katie Rosenhouse,
Southern Living,
6 Mar. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Clichés.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/clich%C3%A9s. Accessed 22 May. 2026.
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