How to Use hackneyed in a Sentence

hackneyed

adjective

• Wise knew that these hackneyed tools would get him nowhere.
  — Billie Bugara, Pitchfork, 7 Mar. 2026
• And for a minute, there’s no more hackneyed backup quarterback talk.
  — Jonathan Jones, SI.com, 17 Aug. 2017
• Maybe so, but think of how badly Congress had stated those hackneyed ideas.
  — Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 4 May 2026
• The hackneyed screenplay does him no favors, either.
  — Tim Grierson, Vulture, 18 Oct. 2025
• The story revolves around this character in ways that feel hackneyed and forced.
  — Erik Kain, Forbes.com, 18 Sep. 2025
• Any positive lesson here is lost in all the hackneyed jokes, and by the end the movie falls apart entirely.
  — Tim Grierson, Vulture, 4 May 2024
• There are those who find the concept of celebrating milestones to be hackneyed, trite.
  — Howard Reich, chicagotribune.com, 12 Nov. 2019
• Few parents can follow the hackneyed wisdom of living in the moment.
  — Yiyun Li, New Yorker, 1 Mar. 2026
• Timid and hackneyed followers come rushing in, assured of their safety from risk.
  — Harper's BAZAAR, 21 May 2018
• 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
• Trauma is not a hackneyed literary trope in the work of Miriam Toews.
  — Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books, 4 Sep. 2025
• 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
• Despite the book’s hackneyed title, there is very little here about civility.
  — Barton Swaim, WSJ, 19 Oct. 2018
• 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
• 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
• 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
• There’s nothing hackneyed or rote about his delirious odes to mental illness for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
  — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 3 Apr. 2020
• 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
• 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
• While not exactly a feminist screed, the script grants nary a free pass to the glut of hackneyed gender conventions in the golden-age canon without at least cracking a joke.
  — Naveen Kumar, Variety, 21 Apr. 2026
• 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
• 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
• What had begun as a useful counter to the toxicity of the Mourinho era quickly became hackneyed.
  — Jonathan Wilson, SI.com, 1 Aug. 2019
• Yet somehow, the shell company set up to convey his hackneyed rants reached a $9 billion valuation, putting it up there with Etsy.
  — Philip Elliott, TIME, 4 Apr. 2024
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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