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Does hackney come from the name of an English town?
Hackney entered the English language in the 14th century as a noun. Some think perhaps it came from "Hakeneye" (now "Hackney"), the name of a town (now a borough) in England. Others dispute this explanation, pointing to similar forms in other European languages. The noun "hackney," in any case, refers to a horse suitable for ordinary riding or driving-as opposed to one used as a draft animal or a war charger. When "hackney" was first used as a verb in the late 16th century, it often meant "to make common or frequent use of." Later, it meant "to make trite, vulgar, or commonplace." The adjective "hackneyed" began to be used in the 18th century and now is a common synonym for "trite."
Synonyms
Examples of hackneyed in a Sentence
Philip Elliott, TIME, 4 Apr. 2024
This is most keenly felt in the second half, when the author’s command of his subject slips and the story rushes to its hackneyed conclusion.
—Michael Greenberg, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2024
The show's cringing-while-laughing setup would be too much for some viewers — but many others found watching the gang guessing ethnicities written on index cards taped to their foreheads to be a welcome change to the hackneyed humor of the contemporary sitcom landscape.
—Erin Strecker, EW.com, 21 Feb. 2024
Flat-footed contrivances, compounded by hackneyed humor and stereotypical targets, contribute to the sense that the play is always a beat behind.
—Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 28 Jan. 2024
Christian Carion’s seventh feature steers clear of hackneyed tropes, alternating between jarring flashbacks of Madeleine’s hard domestic younger years and those intimate conversations between this unlikely duo who form a bond as the day shifts into night.
—Randy Myers, The Mercury News, 17 Jan. 2024
Biden made much in his hackneyed speech — it probably could have been written by a precocious eighth grader in an AP government class — of a painting in the U.S. Capitol of George Washington resigning his commission.
—Rich Lowry, National Review, 8 Jan. 2024
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
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
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.
Dictionary Entries Near hackneyed
Cite this Entry
“Hackneyed.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hackneyed. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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hackneyed
adjective
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