twice-told

twice-told (not comparable)

1. hackneyed; cliché

   a twice-told tale

   • 2001, Frederick Bernays Wiener, Briefing and Arguing Federal Appeals, page 387:

     […] the fact that repetition makes for dullness and that a fresh mind may well be able to introduce a new and hence a more effective approach to what has become rather more than a twice-told tale.

   • 2011, John Pier, José Angel Garcia Landa, Theorizing Narrativity, page 419:

     I am aware that the story of “the story within the story” is itself a twice-told tale, but nonetheless I will tell it again, hoping to make it yield some additional meaning—if my initial contention is right.