twice-told

From there we’ll move with slow cautious steps to gentle verbal sparring, twice-told tales, descriptions of the scarred and darkest places of our old and worn-out souls.

Excerpt: The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer

It's impossible to write a history of neoconservatism without recapitulating twice-told tales.

Rich Lowry's review of books on neocons and the conservative movement

Still, this is more or less an important episode of Superman, despite being the twice-told tale told twice again (and it won't be the last time, either.)

Light the blue touchpaper and retire to a safe distance

It's just that his twice-told tale would be a lot better if its author knew when to shut up.

'The Alienist Ii'

But, as I stood wondering, behold, she gave an order to one of her hand-maids and the girl brought me the sum of the collected monies twice-told.

The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night

She replied, ‘For the tale of all this gold twice-told;’ whereat I was confounded and said to myself, ‘This is impossible.’

The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night

As a hungry young hopeful, raised in the Parkside Houses and Co-op City, Price got off to an admirable start with The Wanderers (1974), a loose-knit Bronx myth cycle, set in the early Sixties, that reads like a bunch of twice-told tales honed and crafted to wow upstaters, hillbillies, Californians, and other rubes, about life in the bad old Bronx.

In Priceland

At this point in his story Matthiessen runs the danger of revisiting twice-told material.

An Epic of the Everglades

But not half as well on the second occasion as on the first; for, a twice-told white one seems almost to become a black one, when you are not used to it

Our Mutual Friend

Moreover, if anything be more tedious than a twice-told tale, is it not the repetition of one half told?

My Tropic Isle