SYNONYMS AND RELATED EXPRESSIONS
hackneyed
adjective
Made stale or unoriginal through excessive use.
Local English device voice, when available. This is not a recorded dictionary pronunciation.
Stale through overuse
Closest synonyms
Related words and expressions
These extend or explain the idea and may require a different sentence structure.
Usage distinction
Return to topHackneyed specifically points to repeated use as the reason an expression has lost freshness.
CHECK THE MEANING IN CONTEXT
See hackneyed in use
The advertisement relied on a hackneyed promise of effortless success.
The closing line was hackneyed, using a familiar promise about a night nobody would forget.
Compare an alternative with the original word in each passage. Shared meanings do not make every pair interchangeable.
Synonym reference scope and sources
The groups distinguish the senses selected for this study entry. Closest synonyms and broader related expressions have separate labels. The listed sources support lexical selection; not every phrase is a direct quotation from a source.
How the synonym reference was prepared / WordNet 3.0 license