WASHINGTON - For more than a century, the National Cliché Institute has gauged popular culture by studying the trite and worn-out phrases Americans use, including "three square meals a day," "like taking candy from a baby," and "I'll pull a few strings." But the Institute has struggled to make ends meet for several years, and yesterday it announced it is closing its doors for good next week because all the hackneyed phrases of the past have been replaced by one word -- "exactly!" Professor Noah Swayne, curator of the Institute for 33 years, has nothing but disdain for exactly!" Swayne explained: "It's a word bereft of imagination. Whatever happened to the day when people could string together a moderately complex cliché, such as: 'You took the words right out of my mouth?'"
For the past several years, Professor Swayne had hoped that the phrase "sounds like a plan" might catch on, but "it never met our expectations. The people who had been using it apparently realized they sounded like idiots, so it's quickly fallen out of favor."
But there is hope on the horizon, Swayne explained. "There is one phrase that is catching on -- excuse the cliché -- like wildfire, and it is this: 'At the end of the day.'" Swayne claims to have heard one speaker use this phrase no fewer than eight times in less than two minutes. He clasps his hands with delight. "If that one keeps going the way it is, I suspect we'll be back in business by the end of summer."
And that, presumably, would make the Professor happier than a pig in mud.
"Exactly!" he said.
