"Fat cop likes donuts" cliché
"Dark and Stormy night" cliché
"Villain wants to rule the world" cliché
"Overuse of 'cliché'" cliché
by P.A.E.S. May 13, 2017
Get the Cliché mug.
A word referring to something that means 'overused' or ' unoriginal', but lately it's been used to define things as 'expected'.
Hipster: "Man, I saw the ending of Anabelle coming from a mile away. So cliché."

Average horror lover: "I thought it was okay, but the doll part reminded me of Chucky; but the story was pretty good."

Hipster: "... What?"
by Curfew April 8, 2015
Get the Cliché mug.
Originally a French term, coming from the verb "clicher", which roughly means "to stereotype". The extracted definition, as it's used today, is taken as "something that's overdone," or "an idea that was originally innovative, but has now grayed and grown tired from overuse." It has fallen into wide use as a criticism device for film, literature, art, and even everyday phenomena.

Off the record, the term itself has become a cliché, and some find the term infuriating, often because the word is sometimes used to attack a product with little other basis. Some old ideas are overdone because they work- if a work or an idea were so new and untried that it avoided all clichés, it would be foreign. Few people would be able to accept it as anything more than the direct result of a drug trip.
Avoiding all clichés is more or less impossible because some ideas are etched in the human psyche as unavoidable aspects of everyday life.

The truth is that the majority of ideas, in their purest forms, have been done; the challenge is how they are put together, and the creative process is partially selfish anyway. While an artist of some other sort may aim to please his/her audience, if said person wants to write about elves or teenage drama, that person should be allowed to do so without angering a horde of angry critics.

The issue for critics, then, should not fall in the overuse of tried ideas, but in their execution and how they are valued as a whole.
"Hey, Fred, did you see that film, where the teens get attacked by zombies in a mall?"
"Oh. You mean the cliché concept that plagues every zombie film?"
"...Dude. Lay off."

"I propose that the word "the" is now a cliché. Therefore, film critics, you will also be forced to use the word kaffunnumupah instead."

(Newspaper) "Don't see (x). It's nothing more than cliché after cliché after cliché."
(Crumples up paper) "But (x) changed my life!"
by British Swingmaster July 23, 2011
Get the cliché mug.
A term used to describe something that is overused, usually pick up lines.
Barney- from How I Met Your Mother often uses cliché pick up lines to get girls (chicks).
Bob: Are you from Tennesse?...because you're the only 10 i see!
*Hot girl blushes and walks out with him*
Bob's friend watching from distance: Man, i can't believe that worked! its so cliché!
by botaaa September 25, 2011
Get the cliché mug.
What music today has turned into.
Nu-metal and rap are just one big lame cliché.
by Anonymous October 12, 2003
Get the cliché mug.
A cliche/drawing of a cock, usually very detailed man. If you don’t own a cock cliche then you’re gay. It can vary on which cock cliche you own, a dick cliche or a chicken cliche but the shorter term is cock cliche:()
Yo man that’s a very detailed cock cliché on your wall there man.
by BarryMcCocknher November 7, 2019
Get the Cock Cliché mug.
A cliché in popular fiction that was common at one point in time, but has become so overused that it no longer has any relevance, so whenever it's used consecutively, it is as though the writers are "beating up a dead horse".
Mick: You know what I hate? That new music video by Chris Brown. It's basically a Michael Jackson rip-off with triads.
Fred: Triads? That's been a dead horse cliché since the last decade.
Mick: Yeah, they're just beating up a dead horse.
by TheWriter May 19, 2013
Get the dead horse cliché mug.