From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishformulaicfor‧mu‧la‧ic /ˌfɔːmjəˈleɪ-ɪk◂ $ ˌfɔːr-/ adjective formal ALSAYINGcontaining or made from ideas or expressions that have been used many times before and are therefore not very new or interesting Children love jokes and riddles that are heavily formulaic.
Examples from the Corpus
formulaic• Set up so it could be sustained by armies of private profit-making firms, it had to be formulaic.• This would not imply that all of the many thousands of formulaic expressions would be expressly taught.• But it was formulaic fast Ministry music, so we thought it out.• This film is too formulaic, meandering slowly through the typical initiation scenes of a stranger in a strange place.• a formulaic mystery novel• Within the category of lexical items, I include the formulaic patterns I referred to earlier.• It is the simple or formulaic use of the trust clause which is of the greater significance.• There is no doubt generally that children love jokes and riddles that are predictably structured and heavily formulaic, whatever the fashionable subject-matter. 