How to Use hackneyed in a Sentence
hackneyed
adjective-
The shift back to the camp at the end happens in a vexingly hackneyed way that robs what came before of some of its resonance.
—Sam Hurwitt, The Mercury News, 19 July 2019
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And for a minute, there’s no more hackneyed backup quarterback talk.
—Jonathan Jones, SI.com, 17 Aug. 2017
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The hackneyed Carl Bernstein, worn down by the disingenuousness of years, is urging them out of the trenches one more time.
—Conrad Black, National Review, 11 Oct. 2017
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There are those who find the concept of celebrating milestones to be hackneyed, trite.
—Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 12 Nov. 2019
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What’s more disappointing, though, is the way the novel doubles down on the hackneyed cliche of the tragic, unattainable beauty.
—Ron Charles critic, Washington Post, 29 July 2019
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What's more disappointing, though, is the way the novel doubles down on the hackneyed cliche of the tragic, unattainable beauty.
—Ron Charles, Dallas News, 30 July 2019
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The obligatory voiceovers before each episode can get annoying, and the dialogue is a bit hackneyed in places.
—Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 19 May 2020
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Timid and hackneyed followers come rushing in, assured of their safety from risk.
—Harper's BAZAAR, 21 May 2018
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There’s nothing hackneyed or rote about his delirious odes to mental illness for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
—Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 3 Apr. 2020
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For so much of the show’s running time, Ghost Nation have played the limited role demanded of them by the hackneyed internal narrative of the park’s stories.
—The Atlantic, 10 June 2018
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Every time the game's dialogue turns hackneyed, that stands out in an otherwise fine-if-rote Star Wars adventure.
—Sam MacHkovech, Ars Technica, 14 Nov. 2019
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RHS Class of 2019, carry with you that childhood spirit of dreaming big, and answer the hackneyed question with all of the possibilities.
—Steve Smith, courant.com, 14 June 2019
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This puts a premium on the start and end of the set, and two of the highlights are satires of a certain hackneyed genre of opening and closing jokes that poke fun at convention while also subverting it.
—Jason Zinoman, New York Times, 2 July 2018
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Why not grasp beyond the hackneyed hope of detecting fragments of parchments in ancient monasteries and caves?
—Cynthia Ozick, Harper’s Magazine , 10 Apr. 2023
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During what resembled a clip of a psychological thriller, guest host Ryan Gosling played a man deeply disturbed that the movie Avatar used the hackneyed Papyrus font as its logo.
—Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 1 Oct. 2017
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This descent into hell (played here by the Paris catacombs) is visually mesmerizing, which makes this movie worth your time even if the scares can be a bit inert and the drama a bit hackneyed.
—Dylan Scott, Vox, 19 Oct. 2018
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Despite the book’s hackneyed title, there is very little here about civility.
—Barton Swaim, WSJ, 19 Oct. 2018
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And yet, that first season concludeson the most hackneyed of sports tropes, the last-second, come-from-behind championship victory.
—Adam Wilson, Harper's magazine, 16 Sep. 2019
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What had begun as a useful counter to the toxicity of the Mourinho era quickly became hackneyed.
—Jonathan Wilson, SI.com, 1 Aug. 2019
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One of the most hackneyed setups in theater is skewered by casting all the traditionally Caucasian roles with people of color.
—Chicago Reader, 18 Oct. 2017
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And Mr. Elliott, for whom the story was written and who appears in almost every scene, lends even the most hackneyed moments a faded authenticity.
—Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times, 8 June 2017
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Newsletter Sign-up Scheele is part of scientific folk-history, and while his hard-luck reputation may be hackneyed, at least it’s based on truth.
—Andrew Crumey, WSJ, 21 June 2019
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There are some hackneyed plot devices, such as Sam confessing her feelings to a video camera in the manner that seems obligatory to contemporary teen comedies.
—Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter, 7 Nov. 2019
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But in the end, this is still a stereotypical superhero comic story, with all the hackneyed, overwrought presentation that can imply.
—Kyle Orland, Ars Technica, 17 Oct. 2023
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The hackneyed script has the effect of lending an unmerited nobility to the politicians and bureaucrats onscreen.
—David Klion, The New Republic, 12 Dec. 2019
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The actor and writer Tracy Letts’s play was first produced in 2003, and, while its subject—losing religious faith—is promising, the script feels like hackneyed William Inge, but without the sexiness and the insanity.
—The New Yorker, 31 Mar. 2017
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The Attorney General raises the same hackneyed and losing arguments in each case involving contraband in jails or prisons,’’ the judges wrote.
—Don Thompson, BostonGlobe.com, 13 June 2019
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But while the novel plays ingeniously with its ancient source, its modern aspects are over-reliant on hackneyed stereotypes about white-bread suburbia.
—Sam Sacks, WSJ, 12 July 2018
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No doubt many of your readers will seize on the quote about millennials being less ‘DIY’ to reinforce their hackneyed stereotypes about millennial fragility.
—Gerard Baker, WSJ, 11 Oct. 2017
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The ending is so loaded with overwrought political rhetoric that even a massive tidal wave couldn’t wash away the hackneyed dialogue and unbelievable actions.
—Rick Bentley, Detroit Free Press, 20 Oct. 2017
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hackneyed.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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