old chestnut

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A stale joke, story, or saying, as in Dad keeps on telling that old chestnut about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. This expression comes from William Dimond's play, The Broken Sword (1816), in which one character keeps repeating the same stories, one of them about a cork tree, and is interrupted each time by another character who says “Chestnut, you mean . . . I have heard you tell the joke twenty-seven times and I am sure it was a chestnut.”

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Words nearby old chestnut

Old Bulgarian, Old Castile, Oldcastle, Old Catholic, old chap, old chestnut, old chum, Old Church Slavonic, old clothes man, Old Comedy, Old Contemptibles

How to use old chestnut in a sentence

So here I am in my requisite Lululemon pants, grunting along to an old hip-hop song at a most ungodly hour.
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It would became one of the first great mysteries in the United States of America, as it was only then 23 years old.
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To borrow an old right-wing talking point, these people are angry no matter what we do.
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He plays an aging punk rocker and I play the drummer from his old band.
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Twelve-year-old dance prodigy Maddie Ziegler has suffered the wrath of Dance Moms tyrant Abby Lee Miller.
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Davy looked around and saw an old man coming toward them across the lawn.
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His wife stood smiling and waving, the boys shouting, as he disappeared in the old rockaway down the sandy road.
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Old Mrs. Wurzel and the buxom but not too well-favoured heiress of the house of Grains were at the head of the table.
The Pit Town Coronet, Volume I (of 3)|Charles James Wills
Vicars' wives had come and gone, but all had submitted, some after a brief struggle, to old Mrs. Wurzel's sway.
The Pit Town Coronet, Volume I (of 3)|Charles James Wills
But with all her advantages Miss Solomonson failed with the old lord, and she abuses him to this day.
The Pit Town Coronet, Volume I (of 3)|Charles James Wills

old chestnut

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How to use old chestnut in a sentence