hackneyed

UK/ˈhæk.nid/US/ˈhæk.nid/

adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,928 of 15,258neutral

Hackneyed means worn out by being repeated far too often. A hackneyed phrase, hackneyed and dull, the hackneyed argument.

It is the standard word for a cliche and is itself close to being one. The hackney was a horse hired out to anybody, so a hackneyed thing has been used by everybody until nothing is left of it.

Definitions of hackneyed

1adjectivehackneyedWorn out by being repeated far too often.C2
“The love song was full of hackneyed rhymes like heart and apart.”

hackneyed is a quality.

Where it comes from

From hackney, a horse let out for hire, hence anything worn out by common use.

From hackney + -ed. Most likely from the fact that hackney carriages have been used so much, that they are extremely commonplace now.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

hackneyed in the wild

Sometimes it is used seriously, but more often it is used humorously, with the intention that it be recognized as both hackneyed and outdated.
Run it up the flagpole
The word "hack" is derived from the British term "hackneyed", meaning "overused and thus cheapened, or trite".
Hack (comedy)
The term is also used for a piece of music in the repertoire that has grown stale or hackneyed with too much repetition.
Chestnut (joke)
Such tools can be created for virtually any genre, although they tend to produce formulaic and hackneyed situations.
Story generator
The Los Angeles Times, for example, called it "hackneyed" and "heavy-handed".
The River Thief

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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