Definition of chestnutnext
as in bromide
an idea or expression that has been used by many people An op-ed piece that offers nothing but warmed-over chestnuts for solving the city's financial woes.

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Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for chestnut
Noun
  • The team used a mixture of zinc chloride and lithium bromide salts to dissolve the cellulose.
    Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 18 Aug. 2026
  • The fire contained compounds from more than two dozen chemical families, including dangerous amounts of bromide, a naturally occurring element that can irritate the skin and mucus membranes.
    AJ Willingham, AJC.com, 29 June 2026
Noun
  • That proverb, attributed to everyone from Yogi Berra to a Danish Nobel laureate, springs to mind whenever someone asks me about an upcoming NFL season.
    Jacob Robinson, New York Times, 25 Aug. 2026
  • An ancient proverb notes that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
    Pete Grathoff, Kansas City Star, 19 Aug. 2026
Noun
  • Meanwhile, Yudkowsky took such tropes of rebellion and rule-breaking and built a philosophical apparatus around them.
    Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker, 15 Sep. 2026
  • Moodley’s comedy The Kandasamys drew on similar South African Indian family tropes.
    Jesse Whittock, Deadline, 9 Sep. 2026
Noun
  • Wars cannot be fought on ideology alone – a truism that perhaps led to the firebrand former defense minister’s departure, after months of clashes and refusing to deal with the army top brass, as Zelensky describes it.
    Nick Paton Walsh, CNN Money, 19 Aug. 2026
  • But most politicians are pretty easily replaced, a truism that Moreno reinforced by going public.
    Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, 5 Aug. 2026
Noun
  • Running parallel to this butchery investigation is the arrival of perpetually hungover FBI agent Gwen Birgssen, played by British actress Lily James with an incomprehensible southern drawl and some clunky platitudes that veer into genre parody.
    Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 16 Sep. 2026
  • In between some of the manager’s more clip-worthy quotes, there were more of his usual — and not incorrect — platitudes.
    Cody Stavenhagen, New York Times, 25 Aug. 2026
Noun
  • Then morning would come, with all the banalities that drew them apart.
    Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 18 Aug. 2026
  • Of course, when a person live-streams long enough, banality can eventually give way to horror.
    Brady Brickner-Wood, New Yorker, 12 Aug. 2026
Noun
  • Alas, poor Bryan is about to learn the hard way that change — as the saying goes — is as hard to outrun as an ever-growing zombie rat king with 37 different limbs and a weirdly personal vendetta.
    David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 16 Sep. 2026
  • As the saying goes, anything is possible under the Friday Night Lights.
    Staff report, Oc Register, 4 Sep. 2026
Noun
  • But a new shibboleth has seized the day.
    Bruce Stockler, Fortune, 5 Apr. 2026
  • The director scores easy laughs off of modern-day progressive shibboleths such as gender-fluid pronouns, trigger warnings and Native American land acknowledgments.
    Gustavo Arellano, Houston Chronicle, 25 Mar. 2026
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Chestnut.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/chestnut. Accessed 19 Sep. 2026.

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