From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishhackneyedhack‧neyed /ˈhæknid/ adjective BORINGa hackneyed phrase is boring and does not have much meaning because it has been used so often
Examples from the Corpus
hackneyed• But this kind of excited appreciation of naturalism in characterisation was not yet hackneyed.• So what if her first original words in months were the most hackneyed.• I worried it was hackneyed, an embarrassment.• This may sound hackneyed, but he really did treat the bar girls as ladies.• Politicians tend to repeat the same hackneyed expressions over and over again.• Is there any point in returning to these hackneyed images of the heroic Far West?• All those slogans we used to chant sound so hackneyed now.• This features the most hackneyed sections of the soundtrack of Casablanca.• He asserted that a modern artist should be in tune with his times, careful to avoid hackneyed subjects.Origin hackneyed (1700-1800) hackney “to use (a horse) for ordinary riding, to use (something) too much” ((16-19 centuries)), from hackney “horse for ordinary riding” ((14-20 centuries)), probably from Hackney, area in London, England where horses were once kept 