THREADBARE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Threadbare

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/θrˈɛdbˌɛr/ Listen

Threadbare

adjective

Repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse. Synonyms: banal, commonplace, hackneyed, old-hat, shopworn, stock, timeworn, tired, trite, well-worn. "His remarks were trite and commonplace" , "Hackneyed phrases" , "A stock answer" , "Repeating threadbare jokes" , "Parroting some timeworn axiom" , "The trite metaphor 'hard as nails'"

Having the nap worn away so that the threads show through.

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"Threadbare" Quotes from Famous Books

... make her money last her till the end of the month. The slightest expenditure had to be debated; the very butter had to be spread thinly on the children's bread; and they had to continue wearing their blouses till they were well-nigh threadbare. To increase the embarrassment they grew every year, and cost more money. It had been necessary to send the three boys to a little school at Janville, which was as yet but a small expense. But would it not be necessary to send them the following ...

— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... the rich molding of the Jacobean mantel had fallen away, and patches of the key pattern bordering the panels beneath it had broken off, though he decided that a clever cabinet-maker could have repaired the damage in a day. There were one or two choice rugs on the floor, but they were threadbare; the heavy hangings about the inner doors were dingy and moth-eaten; and, though all this was in harmony with the drowsy quietness and the faint smell of ...

— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... adores and cultivates, especially during the carnival. The man in whom poor Agathe thought she recognized her son was astride the last two classes of poverty. She saw the ragged neck-cloth, the scurfy hat, the broken and patched boots, the threadbare coat, whose buttons had shed their mould, leaving the empty shrivelled pod dangling in congruity with the torn pockets and the dirty collar. Scraps of flue were in the creases of the coat, which showed plainly the dust that filled it. The man drew from the pockets of his seam-rent ...

— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... widow had sold her mortgaged place and moved to the Pacific Coast. She had invested the few hundreds left her in some river-bottom lots at Verden and had later discovered that an unscrupulous real estate dealer had unloaded upon her worthless property. The patched and threadbare clothes of the boy told him that from a worldly point of view the affairs of the Farnums were at ...

— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... life,— people with whom the loss of a mere article of wearing apparel is more important than a national difficulty—people who devote all their faculties to social schemes of self-aggrandisement—people who discuss trifles till discussion is worn threadbare, and ears are tired and brain is weary—people who, assuming to be religious and regular church-goers, yet do the meanest things, and have no scruple in playing the part of tale-bearer and mischief-maker, setting themselves deliberately to break ...

— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

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