But the slogan that Mr. Bush's judge "will not legislate from the bench" is an empty cliche.

The dunk, the most emphatic play in basketball but too frequently an empty cliché, has found new meaning this season.

Somewhere that teacher must be wondering whether having the last laugh is such an empty cliche after all.

Repeatedly, his concern is less for the hermetic art he wishes fiction to be than for the empty cliche he fears it may become.

They speak of policy toward Mr. Gorbachev's Soviet Union in empty cliches about "negotiating from strength" - as if everyone else advocates dealing from weakness.

The psychologist and writer Dorothy Rowe recounted that she thought of heartbreak as an empty cliché until she experienced it herself as an adult.

His articulation of political aims and postwar plans has been sketchy to the point of empty cliché.

The promises and empty clichés about next year's potential success are insulting to fans' emotions.

In that case we would have nothing left at all, because we would have no plan and economic and social cohesion would be an empty cliché.

Freedom of navigation is not an empty cliche of international law.