Hey, Americans ...

[blamebrampton]

Do you ever use forms of cliché other than plain old cliché? Such as clichéd or clichés? I see it used in a manner that I would consider wrong so often that I am wondering if it is one of those wacky idioms that English develops up all around the world. Or it could just be young people today with their emo music and Twittering ...

Comments

[faynia.livejournal.com]

I read your post twice trying to decide if the issue was clichéd vs clichés (neither of which my Firefox spell check appreciates) or with the way we young people tend to bandy it about for everything.

I've decided that the usage works for anything that's at least two months old. Owning an Ipod? Tch, so cliché. XD

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

That was in fact what twigged me to the fact that Americans might find the lack of d and s endings perfectly acceptable, when my Firefox spellcheck told me they were wrong. I had the sudden realisation that it could be another They Do Things Differently There moment.

And I adore my iPod, even though it is responsible for me now owning all three volumes of Queen's Greatest Hits ;-)

[faynia.livejournal.com]

You know, we do a lot of stupid things differently here. Many embarrassing, facepalm worthy things. Sometimes I think I stay living here for the laughs I get over our awesome stupidity at times.

Wow. Can't say I've got that, or an Ipod.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

It's what happens when you burn your old David Bowie CDs to the pod, then realise that you quite like Under Pressure, then have a little giggle about Radio Gaga, then suddenly remember how much you perversely liked Barcelona with Monserat Caballe guest-vocals ... Before you know it, dodgy purchases have been made ;-)

[faynia.livejournal.com]

I approve of these dodgy purchases.

The last splurge purchase I made happened in Victoria Secret. And, you know? I didn't get a single piece of lingerie.

And like I told my mother, now my bedroom smells like a brothel. \o/

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I do not know what they sell, aside from bras, and half of my brain now believes you brought home a selection of young men. Though I did just have a book fall onto my head ...

[faynia.livejournal.com]

Damn, that would have been the best $30 dollar purchase ever! I should have hunted around the store harder.

I actually bought some new perfume. It does smell good, but when you combine the perfume with the room freshener spray I got from Yankee Candle, well...Brothel-licious.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I bet the salesgirls would have hidden them for their own use ;-)

And how does your mother know what a brothel smells like, I ask?

[arcanetrivia]

Oh, okay, I see what you're getting at.

I would use "cliché" naked if I'm using it as a singular noun. For an adjective, hm. I know that I have done, but I can't describe what internal grammar rules would ask me to do so. It might be that there are none and I'm just sloppy about interchanging it with "clichéd".

As for how this came about, I think it may be related to the general trend in dropping -(e)d from past participle phrases, which usually annoys the heck out of me ("whip cream"? grraaaahhh elethian smash!) aside from cases where it's already well-established ("ice cream"). (How long does it take for something to transition from being sloppy and incorrect to being the usual form and relegating the old way to an historical footnote?)

However, there is also some slack in my mind for people without English as a first language; I notice particularly from the many Chinese and Vietnamese speakers we have here that they often seem to have trouble fully pronouncing the participle ending, and words like "whipped" and "mixed" and such come out with a kind of glottal stop at the end instead of the full -ed sound. (Not that this makes it correct to write it that way.)

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Yes, most of your shifts in words come from shifts in pronunciation. And there are a lot of words spelled one way and pronounced another, like the Australian tumeric/turmeric (first spoken, second written).