Smokes Like a Chimney; Drinks Like a Fish

"He smokes like a chimney."
"She drinks like a fish."
He laughed when I said them in therapy. My facial expressions did not belie my surprise.
"I had never heard that before."
"Really," said I. "Why, when I was growing up, they were clichés. Totally forbidden in our creative writing exercises in grammar school.

"Clichés are words or phrases that have been overused in writing or speech and have therefore become largely meaningless. They include examples such as the classic ‘leave no stone unturned’ and the more modern ‘it is what it is’. In many ways, much ‘jargon’, especially management jargon, has now become a cliché as well, because it has little meaning, and is often used solely to fill space or make the user sound important."
https://www.skillsyouneed.com/

What they fail to teach us in elementary school, however, is that after one or two generations of not hearing the cliché, the phrase becomes new and fresh. In the words of Mr Burt Reynolds, "If you hold on to things long enough, they get back into style. Like me." Some clichés in our language come from other English-speaking countries and seem, well, just plain stupid like in for a penny, in for a pound. Takes a while for folks who don't know that a pound is money and not weight.

Thick as thieves
A shoulder to cry on
Holding the wrong end of the stick
Burning the candle at both ends
Bury the hatchet

Not sure just how frequently I use chlichés in my daily parlance, but I can assure the listeners to mark my words. They shall never fall dead upon the ears with a dull, sickening thud!