old chestnut
Idioms & Phrases
old chestnut
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."
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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Old chestnut
is always a great word to know.
So is gobo. Does it mean:
| a chattering or flighty, light-headed person. |
| a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare. |
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