Words / H / General

hackneyed

adjective/ˈhæknid/

C2CEFR level
55/100Rarity: uncommon
FormalRegister

Overused to the point of being unoriginal and stale.

He fell back on the hackneyed metaphor of life as a journey.

Similar: cliched, trite, stale

Topic: Cambridge C1 (part 2) in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More general words: Cambridge C1 (part 2)