So, you’re talkin’ water and suspect you’re sounding a bit cliche, using the same old water idioms over and over. Your puns and clever twists seem tired and worn out. At least that’s how we feel sometimes here in suburbia, writing about water day after day.

Time for some “research!” What are the most frequently-used water idioms? The all-knowing Google can tell us! From now on, we’ll avoid these over-used phrases unless we get ourselves in hot water at a disreputable watering hole!

Attention engineers, planners and politicians: One amazing factoid from our research: WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE (#15) is thirteen times more popular than WATER OVER THE DAM (#28). And SPEND MONEY LIKE WATER is the least popular idiom in our study (#31).

Methodology: On April 13, 2009, using the idiom list for the word WATER from The Free Dictionary (http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/), each identified phrase was entered into Google search and ranked numerically.