A bad writer's prose is full of hackneyed phrases.
Source: tatoeba (715764)
Hackneyed
//ˈhækniːd//
Synonyms for "hackneyed" (120 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Closest matches (24)
Strong matches (36)
Related words (60)
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
More general
1 entriesSynonyms
2 entriesRelated terms
3 entriesderived
2 entriesderived from
1 entriesform of
1 entriesrelated to
3 entriessimilar
1 entriesTranslations
57 translations across 20 languages.
Bulgarian
3 entries- банален adj (repeated too often)
- изтъркан adj (repeated too often)
- шаблонен adj (repeated too often)
Chinese Mandarin
2 entries- 老生常談的 /老生常谈的 adj (repeated too often)
- 陳腐的 /陈腐的 adj (repeated too often)
Czech
3 entries- ohraný adj (repeated too often)
- otřelý adj (repeated too often)
- otřepaný adj (repeated too often)
Danish
3 entries- forslidt adj (repeated too often)
- fortærsket adj (repeated too often)
- klichéagtig adj (repeated too often)
Dutch
2 entries- afgezaagd adj (repeated too often)
- banaal adj (repeated too often)
Finnish
2 entries- kliseinen adj (repeated too often)
- kulunut adj (repeated too often)
French
2 entries- rebattu adj (repeated too often)
- éculé adj (repeated too often)
Galician
3 entries- desgastado adj (repeated too often)
- gastado adj (repeated too often)
- luído adj (repeated too often)
German
4 entries- abgedroschen adj (repeated too often)
- abgegriffen adj (repeated too often)
- abgenutzt adj (repeated too often)
- ausgelutscht adj (repeated too often)
Greek
2 entries- κοινότοπος adj (repeated too often)
- τετριμμένος adj (repeated too often)
Hebrew
2 entries- חבוט adj (repeated too often)
- נדוש adj (repeated too often)
Hungarian
1 entries- elcsépelt adj (repeated too often)
Interlingua
2 entries- banal adj (repeated too often)
- trivial adj (repeated too often)
Japanese
2 entries- 常套の adj (repeated too often)
- 陳腐な adj (repeated too often)
Polish
3 entries- banalny adj (repeated too often)
- oklepany adj (repeated too often)
- pospolity adj (repeated too often)
Portuguese
3 entries- banal adj (repeated too often)
- batido adj (repeated too often)
- trivial adj (repeated too often)
Russian
4 entries- бана́льный adj (repeated too often)
- зае́зженный adj (repeated too often)
- зата́сканный adj (repeated too often)
- изби́тый adj (repeated too often)
Serbo-Croatian
2 entries- banalan adj (repeated too often)
- izlizan adj (repeated too often)
Spanish
4 entries- gastado adj (repeated too often)
- manido adj (repeated too often)
- manoseado adj (repeated too often)
- sobado adj (repeated too often)
Swedish
3 entries- banal adj (repeated too often)
- sliten adj (repeated too often)
- utnött adj (repeated too often)
Sample sentences
7 total sentences available.
It's better not to use rhyme than to use hackneyed rhyme.
Source: tatoeba (10117969)
I could only come up with hackneyed lines.
Source: tatoeba (10153641)
In Russian, "love" and "blood", "night" and "help", "roses" and "frost", and so on are all good examples of hackneyed rhymes.
Source: tatoeba (10887920)
Showing 4 of 7 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.