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Showing results for old chestnut. Search instead for oak+chestnut.
Synonyms

old chestnut

Idioms  

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

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.

It wasn’t; it was a hoary old chestnut that had already proved its inadequacy.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 24, 2024

Consider the old chestnut, “All Greeks are mortal, Socrates is Greek, therefore Socrates is mortal.”

From Salon • Jul. 29, 2024

This is an old chestnut, but keeping your door open can help to make you look approachable.

From BBC • Sep. 13, 2021

The chapters alternate among the women, each one breathing new life into the old chestnut, “You never know what goes on behind closed doors.”

From New York Times • May 29, 2020

He was watching them from a distance, half hidden in the shadow of one of the old chestnut trees that grew near the house.

From "The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I: The Mysterious Howling" by Maryrose Wood

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.