Make Your Point: HACKNEYED

Make Your Point > Archived Issues > HACKNEYED

Send Make Your Point issues straight to your inbox.

pronounce HACKNEYED:

HACK need

Hear it.

connect this word to others:

(Source)

When Snoopy starts his novel with "It was a dark and stormy night," it's a hackneyed start: a boring, overdone, unoriginal start. You could even call it a tr___: an idea that gets reused in fiction, over and over. Can you recall that term?

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)

definition:

"Hackney" is the name of a place in England where, centuries ago, you could rent a small horse for the day. By the year 1575 or so, people were referring to this horse-renting as "hackneying:" you'd "hackney" a horse, or rent it for the day.

Over time, probably because these horses got overused and improperly treated, "to hackney" came to mean "to overuse anything."

And today, something hackneyed is overused and unoriginal. It's been done by so many people so many times before that it seems boring and uncreative now.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Adjective: "The mean yet popular cheerleader is a hackneyed character;" "A mean yet popular cheerleader? How hackneyed."

Other forms:

None are common these days, but you could use "hackney" in its original verb sense to surprise your reader, as in "Quit hackneying the mean yet popular cheerleader. She's been hackneyed to death." Here's Isaac Asimov making us laugh by using it to attribute dialogue: "'Fifty years,' I hackneyed, 'is a long time.'"

how to use it:

Pick the formal, semi-common word "hackneyed" when you want to insult or dismiss something as being boring, overdone, and unoriginal.

You might talk about hackneyed books, stories, movies, plots, scenes, characters, dialogue, beginnings, twists, or endings.

Or, talk about hackneyed words, phrases, jokes, metaphors, imagery, slogans, or marketing.

examples:

"And we haven’t even gotten to the plot yet: It’s your basic bad-guy-wants-to-take-over-the-world kinda thing. But even Whedon seems to recognize what a hackneyed premise that is, so he has a little fun with it."
— Christy Lemire, Seattle Times, 30 April 2012

"[The movie is] all one idiotic... probably very expensive piece of garbage. The plot involves hackneyed imaginings of cowboys and Native Americans, but it's hard to decipher any cohesive narrative over the circus music, gratuitous screaming, and awful, unplaceable accents."
— Lizzie Plaugic, The Verge, 27 October 2015

has this page helped you understand "hackneyed"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "hackneyed" without saying "done to death" or "banal."

try it out:

Fill in the blank: "It's a hackneyed notion that (something has to be a certain way)."

Example 1: "It's a hackneyed notion that a song has to go 'verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.'"

Example 2: "I had succumbed to the hackneyed notion that sparkling wines are only for celebrations."
— Eric Asimov, New York Times, 7 December 2020

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game for this month is Palindromes in Poems: Yay!

Check out the snippet of a poem, and supply the missing palindrome: the word spelled the same backward and forward, like "yay," "sees," or "racecar." Highlight the hints if you need them, and see the answer by scrolling all the way down. Enjoy!

Try this one today:
"We fix you maternally in the mind, orient you in a case of '_____,'
'there there,' and 'you're young yet.'"
— CM Burroughs, "Gwendolyn as Lover," 2017

To reveal the hints below, highlight the hidden white text.

Hint 1: The number of letters in this palindrome is... six.
Hint 2: The letter that this palindrome starts and ends with is... "T."
Hint 3: This palindrome has... a hyphen.

review this word:

1. Opposites of HACKNEYED include

A. FAITHFUL and SPIRITUAL.
B. NEW, FRESH, and ORIGINAL.
C. WHOLE, UNITED, and UNBLEMISHED.

2. BNL's song "_____" is full of hackneyed imagery, like "_____"

A. It's All Been Done .. Will I see you on The Price Is Right? Will I cry? Will I smile as you run down the aisle?

B. The Old Apartment .. Crooked landing, crooked landlord. Narrow laneway filled with crooks.

C. Who Needs Sleep? .. Be happy with what you're getting. There's a guy who's been awake since the Second World War.

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.

From my blog:
On vocabulary...
  36 ways to study words.
  Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
  How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
On writing...
How to improve any sentence.
How to motivate our kids to write.
How to stop procrastinating and start writing.
How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count.

From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

Make Your Point > Archived Issues > HACKNEYED Send Make Your Point issues straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to "Make Your Point" for a daily vocabulary boost.

Make Your Point > Archived Issues > HACKNEYED

Send Make Your Point issues straight to your inbox.