In English, cliché means some once novel expressions that have been overused and are no longer attractive and considered lack of originality. Some clichés hence lose popularity in the language and become old-fashioned. But as an English learner, I often find it difficult to tell which is cliché and which is not.
I would like to share something from my own perspective to help understand the concept correctly in the way of English. Please kindly point it out if I take anything wrong.
We have a classical Chinese language (文言文) which is an archaic style Chinese used by educated people or the nobles in the ancient times. We do not speak this outdated language in daily life anymore but we study it for years at school so most Chinese people can understand more or less of it. Some people will tend to mix a few ancient/old-fashioned expressions in their talk to make them sound posh and well-educated. I think this style, as it were, can be considered an analogy to Latin words blended in English speech, such as “quid pro quo” or “vice versa”. And similarly, overuse of such expressions will also sound affected and pretentious.
Another legacy of classical Chinese language is the Chinese idioms (成语). Unlike English idioms, Chinese idioms are generally in a unified format of a 4-Chinese-character word. This kind of compact expression usually originated from ancient Chinese literature, with an elaborate story behind it, is adopted and widely used in modern Chinese. Teachers at school are encouraging students to memorize and apply these idioms to their writing to add variety. I think the popularity of Chinese idioms is largely based on the fact that they can help you hit the nail at the head when talking about something with limited characters. They could otherwise have become “clichés” as defined in English if they were not that short and sweet.
Most Chinese people are familiar with popular Chinese idioms. But there are still hundreds of rare idioms out there and hardly used by anybody. I think these rare idioms are similar to those “obsolete/archaic”expressions in English. If you use such words in a conversation, you can certainly expect confusion of the listeners.
