old chestnut

Idioms  

1. 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.”

---

Example Sentences

Steven Skybell, magnificent in the role of the besieged patriarch, led a superb cast that brought a new understanding to an old chestnut through the force of Yiddish language and culture.

From Los Angeles Times

“It’s a very feminist song. I hate to go into that old chestnut, but it’s like, we want to go out and be loud and proud and jump around and have a good time. Boys have been having fun for a long time, so that’s what we want. We want to be free — to do what we want to do and not be judged.”

From Los Angeles Times

There was the old chestnut of a botched restart reception; there were forced passes and hesitant defence.

From BBC

The Old Chestnut of Sint-Rafaël in Belgium is a 150– to 200-year-old witness to the history of Sint-Job-in-'t-Goor.

From BBC

Wilson told me about an old chestnut that’s often repeated in the genealogy community: “All people die twice. The first time is when their heart stops beating. The second time is when people forget about them.”

From Slate

Related Words

• episode
• gag
• narration
• narrative
• reminiscence
• short story
• sketch
• tale
• tall tale
• yarn