Snowclone
A cliché template with fill-in-the-blank slots — an old quotation reused as a grammatical mould.
A snowclone is a phrasal template derived from a well-known quotation, in which certain words are replaced to produce endless variations while the rhythm and structure of the original remain audible. The term was coined in 2004 by the economist Glen Whitman, in response to the endlessly recycled 'If Eskimos have N words for snow, then X have M words for Y' construction.
Classic snowclones include 'X is the new Y' (from 'pink is the new black'), 'To X, or not to X' (from Hamlet), 'I'm not a Y, but I play one on TV' (from a 1980s Vicks Formula 44 commercial), and 'X considered harmful' (from Dijkstra's 1968 letter). Once a phrase becomes a snowclone, the original is often forgotten and the template lives independently.
Snowclones are useful precisely because they carry pre-installed cadence. A writer who reaches for one is borrowing the rhythm of a famous line without borrowing the line itself. This makes them powerful in headlines and titles, where a reader needs to recognise the shape of the joke instantly. It also makes them dangerous: a snowclone signals 'clever' to the writer long after it has stopped signalling anything to the reader.
Rule of thumb: if you can name three other headlines that used the same template this month, retire it. A snowclone survives on freshness; the fifth use is the last use.
“X is the new Y.”
Keep reading the glossary
A phrase or quote so overused that it has lost most of its force.
A short phrase strongly associated with one speaker, character, or campaign.
A short, image-anchored quote in the modern viral sense — quickly shared, easily altered, and prone to misattribution.
A short, vivid extract from a longer speech, designed to be repeated by news media.