What is the English language’s most overworked cliché? In my Mumbai days, 45 years ago, one led the field by lengths. Or maybe I should write was in pole position, another sporting phrase, from motor-racing rather than horse-racing, which is used these days in umpteen inappropriate contexts.

But the phrase concerned was neither of these. It was grim determination. India was invaded by the Chinese, and grim determination flowed from every politician’s lips and every journalist’s typewriter. So, maybe, it should have been. Determination when your country is under attack is a very good thing. But why grim?

The basic meaning of that word is stern or harsh. Fair enough in phrases like a grim smile or indeed grim necessity. But it is already a step to transfer the adjective to one’s own, or one’s army’s own, response to these phenomena. To make that transfer almost compulsory, so there is no determination without a grim in front of it, is a step too far.

It is further unwise to import the words to inappropriate contexts. These days one may show grim determination on almost any topic, from a hard-fought cricket match to fighting climate change or indeed (I exaggerate only slightly) being insulted on Big Brother. That is the mark of the cliché. It starts life as a perfectly acceptable phrase. It then gets extended to places where it shouldn’t be. It boots out other phrases that could be used: why not stubborn determination or fierce determination or indeed plain determination on its own? It then gets wildly overused.

An obvious example is winning hearts and minds. This began life as what the Americans thought they needed to do in the then South Vietnam. Winning battles was not enough, they must win the backing of the Vietnamese people too.

In its origin, it was a neat and well-chosen phrase. The anti-communist cause needed both the emotional support of the heart and the practical support of reason, the feeling, say, that “we’ll be better off if the Americans win”.

It was neat, and many clichés indeed started life not just as neat but as brilliant pieces of imagination. There are many phrases from Shakespeare and other poets that have passed into the language, as there are from the 1611 “authorized” translation of the Bible, or the old English prayer book. In their originators’ mouths these were appropriate, clever and above all fresh.

Wide use can make such phrases proverbial, and our or any language has many more: such practical or rueful thoughts as it never rains but it pours are still live, useful and usable. But wide and thoughtless repetition can make a once-live phrase a dead one. Surely one can try to win people’s hearts without having to win their minds as well? Or vice versa. Not in any journalist’s copy you can’t. Alas — just as, alas, the proper response these days to anyone who uses to be or not to be except in a theatre is a groan.

A cliché’s source may be high or low. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is sound advice but by now a cliché. No less is Jane Austen’s it is a truth universally accepted. Journalists are indeed often to blame. Some original mind among fashion writers dreamed up — I don’t know who or when — the lively notion that (for example) green is the new black, meaning that green was the universal colour of the season. By now every fashion writer in Britain and many other of us hacks have overused versions of this idea to the point where it is dead (or should I write dead as the dodo?).

It’s hard to say where proverbial becomes cliché; a phrase that’s dead to me may still be live to you. But if enough people think some phrase is a cliché, almost by definition they are right. As the saying goes — or is it a cliché? — you can’t define an elephant, but you for sure know when you see one. The same is true of clichés. If it looks like a cliché and quacks like a cliché, you can be pretty sure it is a cliché. Which is enough clichés from me.