28 January 2017
hackneyed
[hak-need]
adjective
1. made commonplace or trite; stale; banal:
the hackneyed images of his poetry.
Origin of hackneyed
1740-1750; hackney + -ed2
Related forms
nonhackneyed, adjective
unhackneyed, adjective
Synonyms
overdone, overused. See commonplace.
hackney
[hak-nee]
noun, plural hackneys.
1. Also called hackney coach. a carriage or coach for hire; cab.
2. a trotting horse used for drawing a light carriage or the like.
3. a horse used for ordinary riding or driving.
4. (initial capital letter) one of an English breed of horses having a high-stepping gait.
adjective
5. let out, employed, or done for hire.
verb (used with object)
6. to make trite, common, or stale by frequent use.
7. to use as a hackney.
Origin
1300-50; Middle English hakeney, special use of placename Hackney, Middlesex, England
Related forms
hackneyism, noun
Dictionary.com
Examples from the Web for hackneyed
Contemporary Examples
Sometimes Allen retools a hackneyed plot and the bones show through—not this time.
Woody Allen’s Best & Worst Movies: ‘Annie Hall’ ‘Match Point’ & More (Video)
Malcolm Jones
July 25, 2013
It was slit-your-wrists dull, but in a hackneyed avant-garde manner.
Whitney Museum’s Biennial: A Big Yawn
Blake Gopnik
February 29, 2012
Even the harmonized choral accents are hackneyed, ripped straight from her previous mega-hit “You Belong with Me.”
Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’: Country’s Prodigal Daughter Creates the Best Pop Album of the Year
Marlow Stern
October 24, 2014
hackneyed chestnuts like that are reserved for old toastmasters, and yet, there we were.
From Moscow to Queens, Down Sergei Dovlatov Way
Daniel Genis
September 14, 2014
Under normal circumstances, a politician being grilled by fifth-graders is hackneyed political theater.
Biden Grilled by Fifth-Graders
Alex Pasternack
May 10, 2009
Historical Examples
We can only refer the reader’s imagination to the one old, hackneyed but expressive, word—fairyland!
Blown to Bits
Robert Michael Ballantyne
Reason three, a hackneyed but very present trouble was the weather.
A harum-scarum schoolgirl
Angela Brazil
The hackneyed simile of the cat and the mouse seemed to me to be especially applicable in the present instance.
Princess Zara
Ross Beeckman
His anger thrilled out in a feeble stream of hackneyed profanities.
The Wonder
J. D. Beresford
Such was the creation of Scott’s Abbotsford, a real ‘romance in stone and lime,’ to use the Frenchman’s hackneyed phrase.
Abbotsford
Anonymous
Anagram
hacked yen
needy hack
Today’s quote
The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.
– Anais Nin
On this day
28 January 1853 – birth of José Julián Martí Pérez, (José Martí), Cuban national hero, nicknamed The Maestro. He was a poet, essayist, revolutionary philosopher. Fought for Cuba’s independence from Spain. Martí’s poetry is respected across the globe. One of his poems was adapted into the song, Guantanamera. Died 19 May 1895.
28 January 1968 – 4 hydrogen bombs are lost when the B-52 bomber that was carrying them, crashes near Thule, Greenland. The bombs are eventually located, but it took nine months to clear the area of radiation.
28 January 1939 – death of William Butler Yeats (W.B. Yeats), Irish poet, Nobel Prize laureate. One of the foremost literary figures of the 20th century. He served as an Irish senator for two terms. He led the Irish Literary Revival. In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for ‘inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation‘. Born 13 June 1865.
28 January 1986 – the space shuttle, Challenger, explodes moments after lift-off, killing all seven astronauts on board, including Christa MacAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire, who was scheduled to deliver a lesson from outer-space as part of the ‘Teacher in Space’ project.