Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Overfamiliar through overuse; trite.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Trite; commonplace; threadbare: as, a hackneyed subject.
Wiktionary
WordNet 3.0
- adj. repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse
Etymologies
- hackney + -ed (Wiktionary)
Examples
“This along with others is listed under the headword "hackneyed phrases.”
“Bibliophile Stalker interviews Ellen Datlow, Editor of (among many, many other things) the upcoming anthology The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy: "It's not that the genres have weaknesses or strengths but that the purveyors of genres write well or badly and use the genres ambitiously or in hackneyed ways.”
“The lyrics that all the world loves and repeats, the poetry which is often called hackneyed, is on the whole the best poetry.”
George Washington
“Efforts were made at home to procure for him the position of Secretary of Legation in London, which drew from him the remark, when they came to his knowledge, that he did not like to have his name hackneyed about among the office-seekers in Washington.”
Washington Irving
“That I was inclined to look beyond the hackneyed was a clear signal sent out.”
“It sounded kind of hackneyed and derivative to be honest. mangoshakes he's consistently funny. one of the funniest parts from cop trailer. and he didn't have to do something shocking to do it.”
Seann William Scott to Star In Kevin Smith’s Hit Somebody | /Film
“What astounds me is that this kind of hackneyed territory is made original once again by personifying the life of small time hoodlumism with an opening of a guy, splattered with blood and breathing heavy.”
“There was an article in the New Yorker about James Cameron and it included a snippet from a rebuttal by Cameron to Kenneth Turan, a critic for the L.A. Times who panned Titanic as "hackneyed" and "derivative" and continued to criticize it despite its success.”
Sound Off: James Cameron's Avatar - What Did You Think? « FirstShowing.net
“People use the term "Orwellian" so often that it has become exactly the kind of hackneyed, overused expression that Mr. Orwell was warning us against, the kind of expression that people use to mask lazy, conventional thinking.”
“He rails about the kind of hackneyed movie he doesn't want to write -- the kind where characters learn tidy life-altering lessons.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hackneyed’.
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Familiar
Just a list of words
fulminate, unctuous, malediction, lumpenproletariat, descry, surfeit, sententious, supernumerary, unabashed, picayune, obliterate, decry and 112 more...
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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gre
municipal, whit, dissembler, berate, liberally, embellish, dissimilitude, histrionics, flamboyance, bombastic, bovine, calumny and 142 more...
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2nd part
prelude, ample, escalate, prototype, accession, acquisition, archives, zealot, indict, verdict, intimidating, timid and 454 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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(1st_wk_150)-Dec_5_2012
replete, steeped, eminent, indiscriminate, voracious, automaton, prognosticate, technology, abound, matron, tinge, compound and 297 more...
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GRE
trope, surreptitious, tenet, insular, munificent, exegesis, limpid, acerbic, litany, cupidity, restive, protract and 105 more...
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adjectives
amort, propense, aguish, seclusive, pokerish, horrent, stem-winding, indign, obzocky, abnormous, fallow, dividuous and 39 more...
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jan_21
magoosh listens
infuriating, imperciptible, sporadic, galvanize, shirk, protean, versatile, auspicious, clairvoyance, nary, presentiment, qualm and 63 more...
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List 015
compelling, clandestine, capacious, captivate, amicable, emulate, fetter, frugal, hackneyed, hiatus, inane, jubilant and 13 more...
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aykut gre
mossy, intrusive, mettlesome, soliloquy, mocking, dissembler, prevarication, histrionics, aphorism, distinction, concise, pensive and 61 more...
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My GRE Vocab
moniker, sobriquet, prerogative, aberration, aberrant, nuance, notorious, infamous, renown, allude, refer, content and 109 more...
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Advanced Words: Part II
facetious, felicitous, grandiloquent, germane, repatriate, exigency, exculpate, etheral, fatuous, heterogeneous, hiatus, idiosyncrasy and 118 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
grabbable, retuiteando, leaving, fantastic, absolutely, kurwa, hella, ridic, underpass, hate, interlude, plush and 2369 more... -
my GRE words
pedant, wizened, histrionic, logorrhea, frenetic, approbation, quibble, knell, acclivity, droog, prevarication, aplomb and 182 more...
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Prep my Lang
Collection of my wordnik word search
equivocal, anomaly, proliferate, assimilate, obscure, aberration, parse, circumnavigate, circumvent, decipher, prose, impasse and 94 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hackneyed.
cooltoonist I thought this was a reference to the London Riots. Sep 2, 2011
yarb Citation on nympho. Jun 22, 2008
doctorfad Is this word a good substitute for 'cheesy'?
What other word can one use? Jan 5, 2007