SAYINGS - THE MOST POWERFUL EARWORMS

And destructive cliches

My mother had a huge grab-bag of sayings. She believed that catching cold would be the death of us, so one of her favourite sayings was ‘Cast ne’er a clout till May be out.’ She seemed to believe it was an eleventh commandment brought down the mountain by Moses (although presumably ditched because of the terrible heat of the desert the Jews were wandering in.) 

She said it meant ‘Don’t take off any clothes until the end of May.’ I argued that May came out on May 1st, like a newspaper so we could begin to take off our winter clothes a month before she thought sensible.

Another of her favourite quotes was ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ I appreciated the rhyme but it took me a while to work out what the nine might be. I love the contrary advice of these sayings. 

‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ versus ‘Many hands make light work.’

Or ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ versus ‘He who hesitates is lost.’

But my favourites are the bizarre ones like ‘A cat may look at a queen’ or ‘Beat around the bush.’ Then there is the culinary ‘Spill the beans’ or the architectural ‘There’s not enough room to swing a cat.’ (originally not a feline but the whip known as the cat o’ nine tails) and what is probably the theatrical ‘Steal my thunder’ which referred to the thunder sheet used in theatres.

I recently read the linguist Amanda Mantell’s article about sabotaging your thinking with thought terminating cliches. The phrase was coined in 1961 by the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton and describes platitudes which are intended to shut down thinking and questioning. Politicians are adept at it. Examples that immediately spring to my mind are ‘boys will be boys’, ‘locker room talk,’ ‘everything happens for a reason’, ‘there’s no alternative,’ or ‘it is what it is’.

They are most effective when they use simple language. I always thought it interesting that in the Brexit Referendum one campaign was named the short, pithy Anglo-Saxon sounding LEAVE while the other gave itself the lengthier, more circumspect and Latinate REMAIN. Most people on the Clapham Omnibus (a lovely old saying which has been used in the name of an Arts Centre in Lambeth) would use the word leave as they travelled on a bus. Few of us would say, ‘I shall remain on the bus.’ we’d say, ‘Stay on the bus.’ I often think that if the campaign to stay in the EU had been named STAY, we might have done so.

Sayings, slogans and cliches are even better when they rhyme, are unusual or humorous. Advertisers make use of this. ‘Go to work on an egg’ is said to have been thought up by the author Fay Weldon and ‘Naughty but nice,’ is believed to have been coined by Salman Rushdie.

The problem is that we can hear thought terminating cliches so often we begin to believe them. Even worse, we parrot them and increase their power. What’s the point of trying to cut our carbon footprint when: ‘We’re doomed.’ Why even try to improve public services when: ‘There’s no money left.’

They’re worth thinking about and guarding ourselves from.

On a lighter note: one of my favourite sayings is the one about days of the week. I was born on a Saturday so the song prophesied would work hard for a living. Most of them were positive except for those born on a Wednesday who according to the rhyme ‘are full of woe.’ Poor folk.

For my new book I’ve invented a new song for the faery folk who haunt it.

It goes:

Sunday’s child is full of wiles

Monday’s child with smiles beguiles

Tuesday’s child will win the race

Wednesday’s tread with not a trace

Thursday’s child can conjure wealth

Friday’s child give all good health

But the child that is born on a Saturday is a meddler supreme and the best of the fay

By the way, if you can think of a better phrase than thought terminating cliche, please add it to the comments box at the end of this post. You never know, it might become a meme.