Robert Hartwell Fiske was recently interviewed by an editor at Marion Street Press, the publisher of The Dimwit's Dictionary.

1. When you are in a social setting and someone uses a worn-out phrase, do you correct him, or allow the flow of the conversation to continue? What about in business interactions?

RHF: To the people I care about, I may point out their having used a dimwitticism; others, I am disinclined to correct. I try not to interrupt people who are talking.

2. People repeatedly use clichés because they are the most useful way to explain commonly felt emotions or recent happenings. For example, if a person declares something is "water under the bridge," are they not simply employing the shared knowledge that "water under the bridge" implies a complication that has been completely resolved? Why do away with an accepted metaphor in favor of a labored account?

RHF: I explain my thinking about this in the introductory chapters to the book. Why? Because dreary, uninspired words result in a dull, lethargic populace, bereft of motivation and enthusiasm. Much of the appeal of dimwitticisms is that they are ready made. There is as little need to labor over what to say as there is to think.

3. At what point does a metaphor become a "moribund metaphor"? Do you feel that there are any permissible or particularly amusing clichés that might be allowed to remain in the common discourse?

RHF: When a metaphor is used too readily to mean whatever it's meant to mean, it's moribund. As I say in The Dimwit's Dictionary, "Metaphors should have the briefest of lives. Their vitality depends on their evanescence." "Particularly amusing clichés" I call infantile phrases. Their humor is altogether short-lived.

I wonder what we would sound like if using clichés was condemned by all. What words, what expressions would we then come to use? We would surely have to think more carefully; we would need to learn more words, increase our vocabulary. Do you know the meaning of otiant? cunctator? eudemonia? flench? Does anyone? These words, by the way, are Scarcely Used Words, a feature in the monthly Vocabula Review.

4. You advocate concise, simple writing, but many of the alternatives you suggest in Dimwit's are rather obscure words. Are you contradicting yourself?

RHF: In The Dictionary of Concise Writing, I do indeed campaign for concise writing. People — especially, it may be, people who have little to say — are hopelessly wordy. Dimwitticisms are a different category; they are the perfunctory (and often insincere) words and phrases we use that ensure we do not have to think too carefully or too clearly about what we may feel or think. How often, for example, have you heard that someone will be "sorely missed"? That's a phrase people rely on when someone has died or otherwise departed. As a summation of a person's life or legacy, it's offensive, it's infuriating.

If some of the words that I suggest people use instead of dimwitticisms are "rather obscure," it's only because people seldom do use them. People may use, for example, "a breed apart" instead of "anomalous" or "with bated breath" instead of "tremulously." The number of words we know and can use, our vocabulary, is one measure of our humanness.

5. What are some of the most striking changes in this edition of the book? Why did you feel it necessary to release a revised edition?

RHF: In this edition, I especially wanted to show that well-known novelists, who you would think write better than others, also rely on dimwitticisms in their writing. It is utterly disheartening to read a dimwitticism in an otherwise finely crafted sentence or paragraph. Nothing memorable is written if it includes a dimwitticism. Almost all the authors I quote in the second edition of The Dimwit's Dictionary will be forgotten.

6. Would you please share a couple of words or phrases that particularly irk you? If you were able to erase any two terms from the English language, what would you dispose of?

RHF: I may be loath to interrupt a person who is talking, but I have murderous thoughts toward people who use:

• humongous

• at the end of the day

• move forward, move forward in the right direction

• shocked and saddened

• despite the fact that, in spite of the fact that, in view of the fact that, because of the fact that, due to the fact that

7. Have you found any publications or authors you feel exemplify your philosophy of writing?