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Combellack argues further, and here he makes his main point, that once The Iliad and The Odyssey are thought formulaic poems composed for an audience accustomed to formulaic poetry, Homeric critics are deprived of an entire domain they previously found arable.

With a few important and a few more unimportant exceptions, no expression can be deemed le mot juste for its context, because each was very probably the only expression that long-established practice and ease of rapid recitation would allow.

Words or phrases that connoisseurs have admired as handsome or ironic or humorous must therefore lose merit and become regarded as mere inevitable time-servers, sometimes accurate and sometimes not.

This observation too may have reference to Anglo-Saxon poetry.

To the extent that a language is formulaic, its individual components must be regarded as no more distinguished than other cliches.