hackneyed
Syllables: hack·neyed/ˈhæk.nid/
hackneyed adjective: repeated too often. Also the simple past and past participle of hackney.
Adjective
hackneyed (comparative more hackneyed, superlative most hackneyed)
- Repeated too often.
- The sermon was full of hackneyed phrases and platitudes.
- It was a great success, that Irish stew. I don’t think I ever enjoyed a meal more. There was something so fresh and piquant about it. One's palate gets so tired of the old hackneyed things: here was a dish with a new flavour, with a taste like nothing else on earth.1889, Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat […]
- Synonyms:
- banal, commonplace, clichéd, shopworn, stock, threadbare, timeworn, tired, trite, unoriginal
- Let out for hire.
Also used as
hackneyed is also the simple past and past participle of hackney.
Synonyms of hackneyed
14 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of hackneyed
| comparative | more hackneyed |
|---|---|
| superlative | most hackneyed |
| alternative form (obsolete) | hacknied |
Origin of hackneyed
From hackney + -ed. Most likely from the fact that hackney carriages have been used so much, that they are extremely commonplace now.
Words formed from hackneyed
Questions about hackneyed
- What does hackneyed mean?
- Hackneyed means repeated too often.
- What part of speech is hackneyed?
- Hackneyed is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce hackneyed?
- Hackneyed is pronounced /ˈhæk.nid/.
Words near hackneyed in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hackneyed (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-hackneyed.wav.
Cite this entry: “hackneyed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hackneyed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.