Irony is literally a cliché

There’s a guy I know who always says, “ironically…” and what follows is a sentence that is completely void of irony. Perhaps augmenting my parents’ belief that I’m a bit of a grammatical elitist, I’ve drafted the following essay on three often-misused words. I would like to point out, however, that I am so far behind where I need to be grammatically. I am no authority on the subject, but the following three words are in need of a little defense. Sorry.

Ironic ≠ Interestingly
Literally ≠ Figuratively
Cliché ≠ Unoriginal

Ironic, Literally and Cliché. These three words are constantly misused and misunderstood. First, irony:

Alanis Morrisette showed her knack for a melodic song, but not the words behind it, when her hit song Ironic failed to show even one example of irony. Now that's ironic! Why, you ask? Well, irony is the art of juxtaposing incongruous parts; the opposite result of what was intended or expected, and as Alanis intended to write a song about irony, it is ironic indeed that her lyrics contain no irony. Mission accomplished (if inadvertently).

Speaking of opposite, it isn't irony but a sad twist of human understanding and overuse that led to the demise of the word, literally,(which died, sadly, sometime last decade). Literally was born to safeguard readers and listeners of exaggerated stories everywhere. Most storytellers, even great ones, tend to drift into hyperbole. So when your storyteller gets to the part where he approaches the beautiful girl in the bar and the next part becomes unbelievable, the storyteller might need to pop out this beauty: "I literally jumped through the roof."

Now let's stop right there.

If Don Juan means the club ceiling was only six feet high and he was atop the bar when he jumped then, yes, he literally jumped through the roof. Or, more appropriately, the ceiling. But in past days when Don would merely have had to say, "I literally jumped through the roof," and people would understand that he meant it, he now has to provide details of his claim, telling that the ceiling was only six feet tall and so on. We would have the plaster in his hair as proof. In days gone by, no further context was required, provided that the magical word, literally, was inserted. The hearer of a given story could provide his own context knowing safely that, as bizarre as it sounds, that little bugger actually jumped through the ceiling somehow. Nowadays when someone says, "I literally jumped through the ceiling," they usually mean, "I (figuratively) jumped through the ceiling," which is sad because, in their haste to puff up a story with exaggerated statements, they make for a bland story and take the poor word, literally, down with them. Figuratively speaking, of course. The word is now being used for the complete opposite meaning for which it was intended. This is through overuse, which is a cliché.

See, many people think the word cliché means boring or unoriginal, but why would we have words like boring or unoriginal in the first place, if they were never going to be used? Nope. Boring and unoriginal are just fine on their own, thankyouverymuch. A cliché is a word or an idea that has lost its meaning through overuse. People say it so often and in so many ways that we forget what it means. Like our friend, the good adverb literally, many words are dying through misappropriation and, once again, overuse. The funny thing is, people misuse cliché all the time, thinking it a synonym for—you guessed it—boring or unoriginal. So, in essence, cliché has become its own name: a cliché . And that's ironic.