old hat

noun
1.
old-fashioned; dated.
2.
trite from having long been used or known.
Origin
1745-55
Examples from the web for old hat
  • His eyes light up as he's describing something, even though to him it may be old hat.
  • Dealing with budget cuts, even steep ones, is old hat for professors and the unions that represent them.
  • His suggestion that our universe may be a simulation run on the computer of an alien civilization is also old hat.
  • The stuff they're accused of doing-the seeds of scandal-are old hat.
  • The new reality was already old hat to many outside the government.
  • As for printing out translated texts, this is already old hat.
  • But dire pronouncements about new forms of entertainment are old hat.
  • More important, so much has changed so quickly that the future-looking early stories have become old hat.
  • Biotechnology has moved ahead so fast that it makes nanotechnology old hat.
  • Reverse engineering unknown signals is old hat to the intelligence community.
British Dictionary definitions for old hat

old hat

adjective
1.
(postpositive) old-fashioned or trite
Word Origin and History for old hat
adj.

"out of date," first recorded 1911. As a noun phrase, however, it had different sense previously. The "Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" (1796) defines it as, "a woman's privities, because frequently felt."

old hat in Culture

old hat definition


Obsolete, old-fashioned: “Get with it, Murray; your methods are strictly old hat.”

Slang definitions & phrases for old hat

old hat

adjective phrase

Out of style; old-fashioned: Tubular stuff is now old hat (1911+ British)