nothing new under the sun

1. A phrase adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes; the author complains frequently in the book about the monotony of life. The entire passage reads, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

Idioms and Phrases

Everything has been seen before, as in Those designs take me back to the 1950s—there really is nothing new under the sun. This world-weary view was already expressed in 1382 in the Bible translation attributed to John Wycliffe's followers: “No thing under the sun is new” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

Example Sentences

As the Book of Ecclesiastes tells us, there was nothing new under the sun.

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"There is nothing new under the sun compared to the previous editions," she said.

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There’s nothing new under the sun, but the best and only thing you can truly offer is your authentic self.

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No new rules are needed, because to cite Ecclesiastes: When it comes to financial crime, as in all things, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

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I also stumbled upon some intermittent fasting studies from the 1960s and 1970s, confirming that there really is nothing new under the sun when it comes to dieting — and if any of these diets worked they wouldn’t intermittently fall out of favor.

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