adjective
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showing the adverse effects of overlong use or of old age
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hackneyed; trite
Etymology
Origin of timeworn
Explanation
The adjective timeworn is good for describing something that's been said or done so often that it's not interesting or fresh any more. A movie with a timeworn plot has few surprises. The joke your dad tells every year at Thanksgiving has probably become timeworn, and the meal itself may seem a bit timeworn. A local government's timeworn way of not dealing with problems may finally inspire voters to make a change. Timeworn is a word that first appeared in the 1700's, sometimes spelled with a hyphen: time-worn.
Vocabulary lists containing timeworn
Unit 1: Telling Details
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Uprooted
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But we know too that to double down is to fall prey to the timeworn seduction of the sunk-cost fallacy: We’ve invested so much in this effort that to abandon it now would be worse.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
This take is ungenerous but not surprising, given that one of the timeworn accusations against Holden Caulfield is hypocrisy: This guy calls everyone else phony, but he’s just as phony!
From Salon ● Jul. 25, 2026
But beneath where the cathedral's singers sit, its timeworn paving stones lies a dark financial legacy.
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2026
Dotting the shoreline is a bleak expanse of detritus: timeworn pumps, tottering derricks, wayward cranes and aging pipelines.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 15, 2026
Werner laces his boots and sings the songs and marches the marches, acting less out of duty than out of a timeworn desire to be dutiful.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
