What's an idiom for something that you've heard many times?

I'm trying to write something for my blog, and I need an idiom that will replace me saying, "I've heard people say that all the time, it's the same old story."


Consider clichéd, meaning “repeated so often that it has become stale or commonplace; hackneyed” – wiktionary and trite, meaning “Worn out; hackneyed; used so many times that it is no longer interesting or effective (often in reference to a word or phrase)” – wiktionary.


You sound like a broken record.

to say the same thing over and over again. (Fig. on a scratch in a phonograph record causing the needle [or stylus] to stay in the same groove and play it over and over.) Last edited by Grefsen; 4th August 2013 at 9:59 PM. Re: sounding like a broken (scratched) record.


According to Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (1997), one potentially relevant idiom is "old chestnut":

old chestnut A stale joke, story, or saying, as in Dad keeps on telling that old chestnut about hgow many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. This expression comes from William Diamond's play, The Broken Sword (1816), in which one character keeps repeatingthe 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."

So you could replace "I've heard people say that all the time, it's the same old story" with "That old chestnut again!"


The phrase is tired or well-worn or old hat or...


There is nothing new under the sun may convey the idea you want to express:

  • Everything that is happening now has happened before. The newspaper today is shocking. Three prominent politicians have been convicted of fraud. Jane: That's not shocking. It only proves that there's nothing new under the sun.

Source:http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com