trite

trite, hackneyed, stereotyped, threadbare, shopworn are comparable when they describe something, especially a once effective idea or expression in writing or art or a dramatic plot, lacking the power to evoke attention or interest because it lacks freshness.

Trite applies to something spoiled by too long familiarity with it and suggests commonplaceness or total lack of power to impress

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the foregoing remarks doubtless sound trite and commonplace— Cohen

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it is as true as it is trite to liken the desert to a sea and the camel to a ship— Coon

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one could wish however that he had found a less trite and commonplace way of ending his chapters— Geographical Jour.

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Hackneyed, often interchangeable with trite, stresses the idea of such constant use that all significance or force is dulled or destroyed

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the hackneyed pictures we have seen again and again—C. M. Smith

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used the hackneyed old theme of the vanity of earthly power for one of his best poems— Langer

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a hackneyed and cheap melodrama

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Stereotyped stresses an imitative quality and a usually total lack of originality or creativity

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most advertising today is stereotyped—using the same words, the same ideas that we have had for more than 50 years— Printers' Ink

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a stereotyped novel about a young girl growing to womanhood

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Threadbare applies to what has been used or exploited so much that its possibilities of interest have been totally exhausted

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when one writer hit upon a good phrase the others took it up and used it until it became threadbare— Walker

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this charge is becoming threadbare with repetition— Pollack

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our self-deceptive pretence of jollity at a threadbare joke— Hawthorne

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Shopworn suggests a loss, from constant use, of some or most of the qualities that appeal or arouse interest

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there hardly exists a more shopworn plot than the one about the show that during its preparation has to battle against all sorts of obstacles to emerge in the end a sensational success— Baum

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when a book as unusual as this appears the old adjectives seem too shopworn to do it justice— Graham Bates

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he has devoted his very considerable talents to a shopworn theme: the building of the first space platform— McComas

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Analogous words: *old, antiquated, archaic, obsolete: banal, flat, jejune, *insipid, vapid: depleted, exhausted, drained, impoverished (see DEPLETE)

Antonyms: original: fresh