A Dictionary of Cont..

our fist, a nail, our jaws, a rope, or anything
held. But boxers c/inch when they grasp each
other tightly and sailors clinch when they fasten
by a clinch. We clinch an argument or a bargain
and a statement that ties up an argumentative
opponent is a clincher.
While, as has been said, we clench a nail, the
nail is clinched, especially if it is secured by
having the point beaten down.
clergy. Originally this word was a group name. It
could be used with a singular or a plura.1 verb,
as in the clergy was represented or the clergy
were represented. But it meant the class as a
whole and could not be treated as a true plural,
as in twenty clergy were present. This; is no
longer the case. The plural construction, twenty
clergy, is standard English today and has been
accepted by some grammarians who refuse to
accept the similar construction twenty people.
This new plural, clergy, does not have a singular.
In speaking of just one member of the clergy we
must still use clergyman. See also parson;
preacher.
clever. See brainy.
clicbC is a French word meaning a stereotype
block and is used in English to describe those
phrases (there are thousands of them), originally
idioms, metaphors, proverbs, or brief quotations,
which overuse and, sometimes, changing
circumstances have rendered meaningless.. Many
of them just fill out the vacancies of thought
and speech. A man goes to say far and he says
fur and wide. Speech is a difficult thing. We
spend more time learning to talk than anything
else we do. It is an effort, an unceasing effort.
There is strong resistance in us to it and the
inertia which this resistance sets up is prlobably
the chief cause of our use of cliches.
Many cliches are alliterative, that is, their
words begin with the same sound. We do not
say we are cool, but cool as a cucumber. Unless
one is slow and sure, things go to rack and ruin
and he may be thrown out bag and baggage.
Historical changes have made many cliches
utterly meaningless. What does fell mean in one
fell swoop? Or halcyon in halcyon days? Or
moot in moot point? Yet these and hundreds of
other phrases, totally devoid of meaning to
those who speak them, are heard every day.
Many cliches were once original and clever,
but repetition by millions, possibly billions, of
people for hundreds and even thousands of years
in some instances, has worn all originality and
cleverness away. They were fresh-minted once,
but are now battered beyond acceptability. And
their use is doubly bad because it characterizes
the user as one who thinks he is witty, or would
like to be thought witty, and yet is a mere parroter
of musty echoes of long-dead wit. His very
attempt to sound clever shows him to be dull.
Our speech is probably more crammed with
cliches today than ever before. The torrent of
printed and recorded matter that is dumped on
us every day in newspapers and from radio and
television is bound to be repetitious and stereotyped.
The brightest day in the world’s history
never produced one-millionth, in fresh, original,
and honest expression, of the bulk of what cascades
over us every day. All this stuff is prepared
in furious haste. There is neither time nor energy
for care or thought and the inevitable result is
a fabric woven of stereotyped phrases. Ninety
per cent of what the public reads and hears is
expressed in these fossilized fragments and,
naturally, ninety per cent of its own expression,
apart from the necessities of life, is also expressed
in them.
This makes the task of the man who wants to
speak and write clearly and honestly a difficult
one. He must be on his guard all the time, especially
against anything that seems particularly
apt. That doesn’t mean that he is never to use a
current phrase or even a hackneyed one. It may
be, for example, that after consideration he
really does want to say that the pen is mightier
than the sword. And if he does, he’d better say
it in the cliche form than in some labored circumlocution.
But he mustn’t expect to be
thought clever for saying it. And, of course, he
may deliberately choose to speak in cliches in
order that his speech may be common and
familiar.
Wits often use cliches as the basis of their wit,
relying on the seeming familiarity of the phrase
and the expectation of its inevitable conclusion
to set the trap for the innocent reader-such as
Oscar Wilde’s “Punctuality is the thief of time”
or Samuel Butler’s “It’s better to have loved and
lost than never to have lost at all”-but that is
a wholly different thing.
client; customer. Though, despite the protests of
the purists, a client and customer are listed as
synonymous in most dictionaries, the distinction
between one who purchases goods from another
(customer) and one who applies to a lawyer for
advice (client) is maintained in American usage.
The term client has spread to those who seek
other professional services. Thus advertising
agencies have (or hope to have) their clients as
do many other advisory and consultative enterprises.
No doubt in choosing this term they
hoped to invest themselves with some of the awe
that surrounds the lawyer. Physicians still keep
their patients (derived from a Latin word meaning
one who is suffering).
That client and cusromer are not completely
synonymous can be shown by the fact that client
could not be substituted for customer in the advertising
slogan The customer is always right.
The advertising agencies would probably be willing
to say so, but the lawyers would not.
climate; clime; weather. Clime is poetic for a
tract or region of the earth (Now in Injiu’s sunny
clime,/ Where I used to spend my time) or for
climate (This moist and foggy clime). Climate
is the composite or generalization of the weather
conditions of a region, as temperature, pressure,
humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness,
and winds, throughout the year, averaged over
a series of years. It has been figuratively extended,
in intellectual circles, of recent years to
describe the general intellectual atmosphere of