Etymology corner

The term 'cliché' Note to the Americans: the stress is on the FIRST syllable, not the second. Why not start pronouncing words properly? has its origins in France, as you might expect.

It comes from the era of hot metal printing, when words were literally typeset using metal letters a bit like those John Bull printing sets we all had when we were kids. As you can imagine, doing this is a bit of a pain in the arse when you're setting a whole newspaper. So the typesetters would, instead of constructing phrases that were very common from scratch each time, slide them off the racks whole, and keep them for the next time.

The actual word comes from the sound the sets of letters made when they were being slid off the racks.

Interesting, don't you think? What? Eh? Oh.