If your editor, English teacher, or mother tells you that cliches are bad, don't listen. I swear by them because I can personally testify to their usefulness. Just read anything I've ever written, and you'll see what I mean.

Anything worth saying is either a cliche already or will soon become one once the word gets around that someone has finally thought to say it. Speaking or writing creatively is a matter not so much of avoiding the use of cliches as of inventing fresh ones. But, for everyday purposes, the old standbys offer several advantages.

Cliches help us conserve energy. The brain consumes tremendous amounts of energy, but thanks to the wonderful cliche, the people of the world probably save enough thinking power each day to light a city the size of Seoul for a year. Imagine how enervating it would be if we had to think of something new to say every time we opened our mouths. But with the abundance of ready-made expressions built into the English language, we are able to chatter on for hours, operating our cerebra at minimal wattages.

We are also spared a great deal of wear and tear on thesauri and thumbs by the grace of the cliche. After discarding many a tattered and torn volume of Roget's, politicians, economists, and pornographers would find that they had run out of synonyms for "security measures," "subprime loan," and "throbbing."

Cliches just sound "right" somehow. They have a naturalness that wins out over the more forced sound of original expressions. Compare, for instance, "pale as a ghost" with "pale as an anemic honkie." To achieve originality, we are forced to be too specific and possibly even reveal some of our prejudices. Very few of us are ready to make that sort of commitment.

Hyperbolic cliches are a mainstay of the formulas of etiquette, where the unadorned truth simply does not work. The cliches do no harm. When the president of the company ends his speech with "We hope we shall have your ongoing encouragement and support," everybody knows he really means, "We hope you'll buy more of our products and invest in our stocks." And we can't tell someone we'll be "grateful for two hours and ten minutes" and expect to get any help, so we say "eternally grateful."

Let's face it: most of us are not very good at lying. If a fellow didn't have cliches to fall back on when he's a contestant on "Wheel of Fortune," for example, he would probably not be able to state truthfully, "I have a lovely wife and three wonderful children." No, he'd fumble for words and in his nervousness might even blurt out, "I'm married to an obese virago, and we have two teenage drug addicts and an 11-year-old antisocial nerd."

One's repertory of cliches tells a great deal about his personality. Psychologists base their word-association tests on this fact. You know how such tests work, don't you? The shrink may read off a list of words, and you're supposed to say the first thing that comes into your head. In group therapy or marriage counseling, the participants themselves may give the words to each other, continuing the chain of associations by turns. With a couple contemplating divorce, it might go something like this.

Husband: "My father."

Wife: "Belligerent."

Husband: "Army boots."

Wife: "Your mother."

I'm surprised that word associations aren't being put to more widespread use. In fact, it seems to me that by now someone should have developed a cliche quotient (CQ) test to supplement, or even supersede, IQ tests. A person's CQ would predict how well he or she would fit into a particular job. An applicant at an employment agency could be asked to give word associations on her application. One of the words might be "unrequited." If the applicant wrote "love," the agency would recommend her to a counseling service. If she wrote "transfers," she'd be a natural as a bank vice president. If she wrote "embolism" or "truffle," she'd be referred to a fruitcake factory.

There are many ways you can use cliche quotients to improve your life. Try word associations with your fiance—it may prove extremely revealing. But please don't bother to post a thank-you comment if it turns out you're incompatible.