Table 1.

Cliché, year of first appearance in a medical article title, and number of titles in articles published 1971–2010 accessed via PubMed

Cliché	Year	N
State of the art	1959	3518
Gold standard	1979	915
Paradigm shift/s/ing	1980	722
Cutting edge	1970	411
Outside the box	1995	200
Wind/s of change	1960	184
Coalface goalposts and playing field	c. 1990	164
Pushing the envelope	1989	86
Quantum leap	1972	48
Rubber and road	1985	23