Stylistic classification of the english vocabulary

a) Cliche
The first type of set expressions is the cliche. A cliche is generally defined as an expression that has be­come hackneyed, trite. It has lost its precise meaning by constant reiteration; in other words it has become stereo­typed. It has lost its freshness, the aesthetic generating po­wer it once had. There is always a contradiction between what is aimed at and what is actually attained. Examples of real cliches are:
rosy dreams of youth, astronomical figures, to break the ice, the irony offate, etc.
Most of the widely recognized word combinations which have been adopted by the language are unjustly classified as cliches. Debates of this kind proceed from a wrong notion that the term cliche is used to denote all stable word combinations, whereas it coined to denote word combinations which have long lost their novelty and became trite, but which are used as if they were fresh and original and so have become irritating to people who are sensitive to the language they hear and read.
According to American scholar R. Altic, if one word inevitably invites another, if you read half of the sentence and know certainly what the other half is, you have cliches. Some scientists think that everything that is predictable is a cliche. This opinion is wrong. The set expressions of a language are indispensable from its voca­bulary and we cannot label them as cliche. In each case we must know the aim, the situation in which the phrase was used. Then we shall know whether it is a cliche or not. Writers skillfully use the stock of such expressions.
In most cases set expressions are based on the use metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, simile, periphrasis, etc. E.g.:
as busy as a bee, as white as chalk, as like as two peas (simile), maiden speech, black frost (epithet and periphrasis), fair and square, by hook or by crook, (rhyme), to have one's head in the clouds, to pull one s leg (periphrasis), a lame duck, in a nutshell (metaphor).