threadbare

[thred-bair]

adjective

1. having the nap worn off so as to lay bare the threads of the warp and woof, as a fabric, garment, etc.

2. wearing threadbare clothes; shabby or poor.

   a threadbare old man.

3. meager, scanty, or poor.

   a threadbare emotional life.

4. hackneyed; trite; ineffectively stale.

   threadbare arguments.

threadbare

/ ˈθrɛdˌbɛə /

adjective

1. (of cloth, clothing, etc) having the nap worn off so that the threads are exposed

2. meagre or poor

   a threadbare existence

3. hackneyed

   a threadbare argument

4. wearing threadbare clothes; shabby

Other Word Forms

• threadbareness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of threadbare¹

First recorded in 1325–75, threadbare is from the Middle English word thredbare. See thread, bare ¹

Example Sentences

Wednesday are second bottom of the Championship with six points from nine games after a torrid period off the field has left them with a threadbare squad.

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Its so-called institutions, among them our nation’s increasingly threadbare 18th-century Constitution, are visibly crumbling, as if eaten away from within by an army of persistent termites.

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Her attorney, Abbe Lowell, dismissed the referral as “three pages of stale, threadbare allegations.”

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He was being used as an emergency striker with Isak an outcast, so how can Howe contemplate a sale when resources are now so threadbare?

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The talk of “crime” is even more threadbare than the usual right-wing pretexts.

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Related Words

• faded 
• ratty 
• scruffy 
• shabby 
• shopworn 
• tacky 
• tattered