cliché

Etymology

Recorded in English from 1825 in the printing sense “stereotype block”,^[1][2] borrowed from French cliché, the past participle of French clicher (“to make a stereotype plate”) used as a noun,^[1][3] a variant of cliquer “to click”,^[4] said to imitate the sound of the matrix striking the molten metal.^[5][2]

The figurative sense “trite phrase” is first attested in 1888, from the idea of a plate that reproduces the same print endlessly, as with stereotype;^[1] it was not common in English until the 1920s.^[1]

Noun

cliché

1. A phrase or idea used so often that it has lost its force.^[5][3][2]
2. An overused theme, character, or situation in art or literature.^[3][2]
3. (printing) A stereotype or electrotype plate.^[4][2][6]

Adjective

cliché

1. Trite, hackneyed.^[4][2][6]

References

1. [1] [2] [3] [4] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
2. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
3. [1] [2] [3] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. [1] [2] [3] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. [1] [2] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
6. [1] [2] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org