Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having the nap worn down so that the filling or warp threads show through; frayed or shabby.
  • adjective Wearing old, shabby clothing.
  • adjective Overused to the point of being worn out; hackneyed.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having the thread bare; worn so that the nap is lost and the thread is visible, either wholly or in certain parts: said of a piece of textile fabric, as in a garment, or of the garment itself.
  • Wearing threadbare clothes; shabby; seedy.
  • Well-worn; much used; hence, hackneyed; trite: as, a threadbare jest.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Worn to the naked thread; having the nap worn off; threadbare clothes.
  • adjective Fig.: Worn out

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective of cloth shabby, frayed and worn to an extent that warp threads show
  • adjective of a person wearing clothes of threadbare material
  • adjective of speech banal or clichéd; trite or hackneyed

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse
  • adjective having the nap worn away so that the threads show through

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

thread + bare

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Examples

  • During office hours, he tools around in threadbare denim shirts and old motorcycle jackets.

    Old Clothes Teri Agins 2010

  • Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans.

    Jane Austen Gets Defensive 2006

  • Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans.

    SeeLight: 2006

  • Replied he, O Kings of the Age, the strangest thing that happened to me was that one day, two-and-twenty years ago, I snatched a girl who belonged to the Holy City; she was gifted with beauty and comeliness, despite that she was but a servant and was clad in threadbare clothes, with a piece of camlet-cloth on her head.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • The Cathedral is occupied 24/7 by pious parched and shriveled Indian women, barefoot and wrapped in threadbare Indian cloths, crawling the length of the nave on their knees, pleading with the larger than life suffering gesso Jesus hanging above the baroque red velvet elegance of the raised altar platform.

    San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas 2004

  • The Cathedral is occupied 24/7 by pious parched and shriveled Indian women, barefoot and wrapped in threadbare Indian cloths, crawling the length of the nave on their knees, pleading with the larger than life suffering gesso Jesus hanging above the baroque red velvet elegance of the raised altar platform.

    San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas 2004

  • "Gentle, austere figures, dressed always in threadbare black"

    A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago 1919

  • I had not meant to spend any more money on the house, but I was worn threadbare from the discomfort of having no room of my own.

    Madeleine: An Autobiography Madeleine 1919

  • But I felt a pang of guilt as I recalled the threadbare state of Kedge-Lockaby's modest little hospital.

    Sagittarius Whorl May, Julian 2001

  • Blake endures the deprivation with a kind of threadbare resignation, saving his hostility for angry phone calls to his manager (Paul Herman).

    Review: Crazy Heart « Screaming Blue Reviews 2010

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