Somewhere between the exciting occasion of a first byline and the perhaps disappointing discovery of a first grey hair comes an epiphany: “I am starting to trot out familiar phrases.”

The mishap “just waiting to happen”. . . the official who claims he has several responsibilities that mean he “wears many hats” . . . the reporter for whom so many smallish towns are “sleepy” and any island beset by an upheaval is “paradise lost.”

You’ve read ’em all.

I offer you this from Wikipedia:

The word is borrowed from French. In printing, a cliché was a printing plate cast from movable type. This is also called a stereotype. Though letters were generally set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. “Cliché” came to mean such a ready-made phrase. Some authorities say the French word comes from the sound made when the molten stereotyping metal is poured onto the matrix to make a printing plate. The verb cliquer means “to click”.

Any thoughts?