I live in New York City where we just had a gigantic visitor: Jonas. Otherwise known as the second biggest blizzard in New York history.

These days storms are given popular names. (Why is it necessary to baptize them?) But when it comes to writing or talking about the weather, we cling to clichés. Snow is routinely called cold, damp, white. Why don’t we find more originality? In Alaska, where there’s plenty of the white stuff, the native Inuits have 52 words for snow!

“We’re all susceptible to using clichés, reaching for the easy word or phrase rather than seeking the most accurate, most vigorous one,”  asserts Robert Hartwell Fiske in his thought-provoking book, Thesaurus of Alternatives to Worn-Out Words and Phrases. Browsing through it, I was chagrined to discover how much of my own speech utilizes the over-used. For example, “back to the drawing board,” an act that I proclaim with every revision, is dismissed as a “moribund metaphor.” Nor should I “wash my hands of it,” since that, too, is “moribund “- though Fiske supplies 35 alternatives.

We like to think of ourselves as originals, not carbon copies, so unearthing a store of creative expressions is a good way to start. Since Jonas forced me to hibernate, I used the time to research quotes about snow and found a few that bring it to imaginative life. A “snow- globe world.” That’s Sarah Addison Allen’s description in her book, The Sugar Queen. I’m also delighted by Jamie Mc Guire, author of the best-seller Beautiful Disaster, who saw snowflakes as “politely begging entrance” to the windows they drifted against.

But the most startling declaration I came across was that “snow itself is lonely.” According to famed author/critic/ conservationist Joseph Wood Krutch, it’s lonely because “the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.” On the other hand, he also saw snow as “self-sufficient.”  That’s a challenging combination for those of us engaged in necessarily lonely work like writing, painting, being president, or just coping with living alone. (If only I were ‘self-sufficient” enough not to need to connect with Facebook and LinkedIn some twenty times a day! )

Whether speaking or writing, we can all try to avoid shop-worn expressions and practice being more original. Isn’t this healthier than succumbing to metaphors that are “moribund”?

Comments may be sent to ahosansky@gmail.com.
WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com
BOOKS: ROLE PLAY – CreateSpace.com & Amazon.com. Also Amazon Kindle. WIDOW’S WALK available through iUniverse.com; TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW – Xlibris.com; TEN WOMEN OF VALOR – -CreateSpace.com, Amazon.com; Amazon Kindle.