Lost meaning due to constant repetition

How would I say that a phrase or word has "lost it's meaning due to constant repetition."

Take the word "awesome":
"Awesome" used to denote a situation in which the speaker (or writer) was overwhelmed with "awe." "Awesome" is now used as a measure of how "interesting" something is and isn't terribly high on that rating scale.

How would I describe the loss of meaning due to the constant repetition of the word "Awesome"?

Take George Santaya's words "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it":
People often say this phrase to try and instigate action but because of it's overuse, it no longer has any meaning. It's just something people say when they talk about The Holocaust, or the bad grades they got last semester in college.

How would I describe the loss of meaning due to the constant repetition of the phrase "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"?

Solution 1:

Oh, I got it: hackneyed.

Still uncommon enough that it hasn't become cliched to the point of banality, resulting in an empty, vapid, platitude.

:)

Solution 2:

You're looking for "semantic satiation" (also known as semantic saturation) - A phenomenon whereby the uninterrupted repetition of a word eventually leads to a sense that the word has lost its meaning. http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/Semantic-Satiation.htm

Examples: "awesome", "basically", "literally", "definitely", "hectic", "terrific".

•"Have you ever tried the experiment of saying some plain word, such as 'dog,' thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has become a word like 'snark' or 'pobble.' It does not become tame, it becomes wild, by repetition." (G.K. Chesterton, "The Telegraph Poles." Alarms and Discursions, 1910)

Solution 3:

Just as a government has inflated the dollar, making it loose value over time, the same can happen to an over used expression.

This is not necessarily the case of bromides like "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". Epistemologically the problem is not in the over use, but in the lack of meaning in the expression. Remembering history has no significance, if one doesn't understand or can't conceptualize it.

The phrase didn't have a meaning to begin with. It simply is a meaningless sequence of words with the sound of a proverb.