That makes your use of the word hackneyed the very opposite of common and stale. In addition to being a great replacement for the l -word when you want to indicate boredom with something, hackneyed is not a word you hear often. (Yeah, there’s a complicated word history here, but it appears to be related to drudgery or horses being overworked.) The word is recorded 1740–50 and is based on hackney, a type of horse-drawn carriage. If it’s something you’ve done so many times that it’s become trite, common, or stale, you can also say it’s hackneyed. Check out our list of eight words that can describe anything boring, uncool, or commonplace. Fortunately, there are plenty of words that you can use in place of the word lame. (Not cool, guys.)īut today, using the word lame to describe anything inherently undesirable can come off as hurtful, since it equates being injured or having a physical disability with being undesirable. A later, more specific meaning, was used to describe someone physically disabled, “especially in the foot or leg so as to limp or walk with difficulty.” By the 1300s, lame extended to refer to anything considered “defective,” and by the late 1800s, lame was being used to make fun of socially awkward or “uncool” people. L ame comes from an Old English word for “crippled, weak,” which was first recorded in 700s. While we cannot eliminate words just because we don’t like what they mean (or else we would suggest cutting a few others from the lexicon as well), we can stop using words whose meanings have morphed and changed so much over time that they have actually become offensive, like the word lame. There are plenty of words that should be retired this year (we nominate social distancing to become a phrase of the past as soon as humanly possible).
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