The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés: Names and Shames More Than 1,500 Familiar Words and Phrases

Let's face it, as much as we try to avoid them like the plague, clichés slip into everyday conversation. It's no way to win friends and influence people, but sometimes we just can't help ourselves, know what I mean? (Adapted from the publicity blurb.) Betty Kirkpatrick's The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés: Names and Shames More Than 1,500 Familiar Words and Phrases (sub‐title). It is a revised edition of The Dictionary of Clichés published by Bloomsbury in 1996.

This is a cracking little hardback which I recommend wholeheartedly. It is one of that genre of books, rare in the reference...