reach-me-down

Yet sentence after sentence in the dialogue is so well-worn that it's threadbare: a patchwork of salt-of-the-earth, reach-me-down cockney phrases.

This Happy Breed; Henry IV, Parts One and Two – review 2011

It should not be reach-me-down exchange for more than 5 days.

Burning the Fat: Fueled by Fatuousness BikeSnobNYC 2009

Aldous Huxley defined the Mother's Day card as "Greetings with poems printed in imitation handwriting, so that if Mom were in her second childhood she might be duped into believing that the sentiment was not a reach-me-down, but custom-made, a lyrical outpouring from the sender's overflowing heart."

Liz Smith: A Chapter From The Mother Book 2008

With all his boldness (and there is no risk that he will not run with probability) there are a dozen occasions on which a reach-me-down character will satisfy him well enough.

The Common Reader, Second Series 2004

He was the kind of friend you'd expect Morrison to have -- a middle-aged moneybags of a banker called Locke, with reach-me-down whiskers and a face like a three-day corpse.

Flash For Freedom Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1971

He was the kind of friend you'd expect Morrison to have -- a middle-aged moneybags of a banker called Locke, with reach-me-down whiskers and a face like a three-day corpse.

Flash For Freedom Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1971

It is therefore quite possible that a reach-me-down constitution proposed, not by the conquerors, but by an international congress with no interest to serve but the interests of peace, might prove acceptable enough to a nation thoroughly disgusted with its tyrants.

New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index Various

Their splendid bodies were hidden in reach-me-down khaki uniforms, their feet squashed into boots that looked like blocks of wood, and every tin hat seemed to be a couple of sizes too small.

Marrakech 1939

I think Cummings looks rather an ass, but that is partly due to his patronising 'the three-and-six-one-price hat company,' and wearing a reach-me-down frock-coat.

The Diary of a Nobody Grossmith, George, 1847-1912 1921

One was a shaggy yellow ulster of “reach-me-down” cut, the other a very old and rusty cloak with a cape—something like what the French called a “Macfarlane.

XVII. Book I 1920