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hackneyed
in a sentence

show 29 more with this conextual meaning
  • I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell.   (source)
  • But that expression of "violently in love" is so hackneyed, so doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea.   (source)
    hackneyed = lacking in impact due to too much previous exposure
  • It is now necessary for me to use the rather hackneyed phrase "meanwhile, back at the ranch."†   (source)
  • Without question, such hackneyed phrases as "tell mother I died for my country," reported as the dying words of many a Civil War soldier, were a sentimental convention.†   (source)
  • Yet if she did not quite exist in the full flood of sunlight, which is the hackneyed metaphor for good health, she was comfortably and safely far away from that abyssal darkness down into which she had nearly strayed.†   (source)
  • These reflections appealed to Gordon just because they were so hackneyed.†   (source)
  • She wrote, "It remains to be seen." No matter how true, the hackneyed phrase disturbed his sense of creativity.
  • The most hackneyed phrase in Silicon Valley these days is "We're the next Google."
    hackneyed = lacking impact because it has been heard so many times before
  • It may not be better than what's been written before, but at least it's an attempt to add to the dialogue rather than another hackneyed reiteration of Plato.
  • She outlined her speech in hackneyed expressions, but delivered it with moving examples from her constituents.
  • But that expression of violently in love' is so hackneyed, so doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea.   (source)
  • The film employs the now rather hackneyed device of switching between black-and-white and color to indicate a dream.
  • Sound of mating birds, sound of spring blossoms dropping in the tranquil air, the bark of sleepy dogs at midnight; who is to set them down and make them anything but hackneyed?   (source)
    hackneyed = writing that befits a hack writer; i.e., writing that is unimaginative and filled with overused expressions, ideas, and formulas
  • I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning.   (source)
    hackneyed = lacking impact due to too much previous exposure
  • The word "hackneyed" here means "used by so, so many writers that by the time Lemony Snicket uses it, it is a tiresome cliché."†   (source)
  • It is very difficult, experts have told us, to find a needle in a haystack, which is why "needle in a haystack" has become a rather hackneyed phrase meaning "something that is difficult to find."†   (source)
  • As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of WORDS chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of PHRASES tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.†   (source)
  • Her eyes followed his, searching among the new paraphernalia, the trapezes over the water, the swinging rings, the portable bathhouses, the floating towers, the searchlights from last night's fêtes, the modernistic buffet, white with a hackneyed motif of endless handlebars.†   (source)
  • As for the parents, they were determined upon spiritualizing the world as much as possible, and, once the hymn was concluded, the father launched into one of those hackneyed descriptions of the delights of a release, via self-realization of the mercy of God and the love of Christ and the will of God toward sinners, from the burdensome cares of an evil conscience.†   (source)
  • In the galleries the enthusiasm was unreserved; in the stalls and boxes, people smiled a little at the hackneyed sentiments and clap-trap situations, and enjoyed the play as much as the galleries did.†   (source)
  • How could the born lady—the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly unpractised in the world, at sixty years of age,—how could she ever dream of succeeding, when the hard, vulgar, keen, busy, hackneyed New England woman had lost five dollars on her little outlay!†   (source)
  • It was not wounded vanity that drove me to it, and for God's sake do not thrust upon me your hackneyed remarks, repeated to nausea, that "I was only a dreamer," while they even then had an understanding of life.†   (source)
  • As he bowed over her he smiled, and quoted the hackneyed and beautiful lines from The Rape of the Lock about Belinda's diamonds, "which Jews might kiss and infidels adore."†   (source)
  • Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips.†   (source)
  • Then take my word for it, — I am not a villain: you are not to suppose that — not to attribute to me any such bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances than to my natural bent, I am a trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life.†   (source)
  • —Every line, every word was—in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid—a dagger to my heart.†   (source)
  • doth any know and lay to heart-- CREON Is this the prelude to some hackneyed saw?   (source)
    hackneyed = writing that befits a hack writer; i.e., writing that is unimaginative and filled with overused expressions, ideas, and formulas
  • Besides, though taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their genus omne.†   (source)
  • For which hackneyed quotation I will make the reader amends by a very noble one, which few, I believe, have read.†   (source)
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