Cliché
Etymology
From French cliché, the past participle of clicher, "to stereotype" in the printing trade. The word is thought to be echoic — imitating the clack of the metal matrix being dropped to cast a printing plate. A cliché plate reproduced the same image endlessly, and the metaphor carried over perfectly: a verbal cliché is a phrase stamped out so often it no longer registers.
noun · /klee-SHAY/
A phrase or idea so overused that it has lost its freshness and force.
What it names
The expressions that arrive before you’ve finished thinking — the ready-made phrasing that lets a writer skip the work of finding the true words.
Example
The eulogy leaned on cliché — "life of the party," "gone too soon" — and somehow said nothing about the man.
Related idea
A cliché is a phrase deadened by repetition, while an idiom is merely non-literal; overuse is what turns a once-vivid idiom into a cliché.