CLICHES THEY SERVE AS FAST FOOD OF THE LANGUAGES

Most of the buzz words and buzz phrases we hear and read about today could wind up as cliches tomorrow, granted they prove useful and fall trippingly on the tongue. This being a major election year, the air is buzzing with "electability," a pleasant-sounding term with frightening undertones. Candidates and their henchmen are playing verbal tennis with one another, mercilessly confusing us as to who is bright enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel, which ones really know the difference between the icing on the cake and the bottom line, and how many have thrown out the baby with the bathwater and categorically denied it.

"Categorically deny" became a meaningless phrase during the Thomas-Hill hearings, but our courts of law are duty-bound to heed the message. President Bush continues to find the expression useful, categorically denying everything his detractors try to lay at his door. With our president, it's only the Congress thing, and hence, forgettable.

Politics is not my thing, and no one seems to know what is best for our country. But it's easy to see why so many candidates are currently buzzing around with the term "cautiously optimistic." What a convenient, face-saving phrase for losers!

At this writing, the Middle East is said to be buzzing with the peace efforts of "honest brokers." One wonders why this expression is limited to the Middle East. Wall Street and Washington are crawling if not buzzing with "honest" brokers.

Also buzzing feverishly throughout the land these days are "quality of life" and "old-fashioned values." One stratum's values are not necessarily those of another, and what constitutes quality living for some is pure anathema for others. But even undertakers are keeping pace with fashion. Funeral homes in major cities are charging enormous sums to ensure quality and old-fashioned values in their travel plans for the deceased. If you sense danger in this regard and have money to burn, explain that you plan to be cremated and have your ashes scattered on the far side of Sugarloaf Mountain in Brazil.

Let us not, however, sell inceptive cliches short. Without cliches, writers couldn't meet their deadlines and we ourselves would often wind up at a loss. And thanks to one Christine Hammer, a lexicologist, a dictionary of cliches is now available for the needy. In a Florida Times Union review of "Have a Nice Day No Problem! A Dictionare of Cliches," reviewer Amy Wilson quotes from the collection of 3,000: "Cliches are the fast food of the language ... They are a few words to do the work of too many paragraphs and too much dialogue...."

Think of all the quotations from the Bible, from Shakespeare and other world-famous writers and thinkers now available in a single collection. And think how many words it would take to explain these choice bits of fast food: gilding the lily, hiding one's light under a bushel, killing the fatted calf, burning the candle at both ends, and et tu, Brute, to name a few.

Most of us with literary and religious backgrounds can place these and agree such references are trite, but we fall back on them in a pinch, and even people without our background are familiar with and find them useful though the sources may elude them. We don't know the source of every cliche we use, either. Who knows who dreamed up apple-pie order, and what have apples to do with it? Who knows where letting the cat out of the bag came from? Or a pretty kettle of fish? And does it really rain cats and dogs? But the first persons to use these expressions had to be poets or humorists or both, and we wish we were half as original.

To be fair to Ms. Hammer, who dotes on cliches, we must explain that she makes a nice distinction between the colorful cliche and those with nothing to recommend them. "No problem!" is a case in point. She invites us to blame the media for what they have done to extend n o problem all the way to Yugoslavia.

The media, we feel, should pay more attention to Bil Keane's Dolly. Most of us open blinds to let the sunshine in. Dolly says, "I like the way the venetian blinds slice the sunshine."

Note on March 18 column: Perhaps it was a Michelangelo virus that removed an essential reference from the sentence defining "successible." The omission of "accessible" left a gap in meaning and the suggestion of a man's being "successible" in a topless bar. Better luck this time around, to resort to another cliche.