How To Use Threadbare In A Sentence

  • His mane is a little threadbare and Mum threatens to bin him calling him moth-eaten!
  • Threadbare patches in her fur and mane shone dull against the her tawny pelt.
  • The efforts of the Emperor Franz Joseph and the ruling elite to divert attention from their country's increasingly threadbare imperial pretensions furnished Musil with comic material galore.
  • Nottingham Crown Court heard that staff, in threadbare butchers' aprons, worked into the early hours to fillet carcasses which had been condemned as unfit for human consumption.
  • Most of these diarists ceased to write in 1945, but a few kept going through the threadbare peace.
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  • Their great old houses overflow with rough medieval furniture, threadbare tapestries and religious relics worn smooth by the touch of generations.
  • The democratic pretences of the opposition have always been threadbare.
  • Her comments are so threadbare and banal, that her role smacks of the worst kind of tokenism.
  • Sometimes this tale of interrupted promise swung on pitifully threadbare evidence.
  • One old man with an almost threadbare pate and the thinnest of comb-overs even stopped to pump up his volume and then smile at the result.
  • Leaving aside service so patchy it was almost threadbare, I don't like overdone halibut, while Michael wasn't impressed with his corn-fed chicken with pomme Berny and truffle froth.
  • The weather-beaten windows, with their peeling paint, will go, as will the threadbare carpet in the games room.
  • She sat cross-legged on a square of threadbare carpet.
  • As with many of Paisley's characters he is a lovable rogue, thoughtless but not cruel, well-meaning but easily sidetracked, a boy whose threadbare background has spelt out a future of meagre options, many of them criminal.
  • He was issued with a thin mat and a threadbare blanket and taken to the cell block.
  • But even he has withdrawn to the shade of a canopy draped above a couple of threadbare sofas and that glorious moment now seems an age away.
  • Their palaces are shabby, with threadbare carpets and dreary flower arrangements. Times, Sunday Times
  • They have limp hair, threadbare coverings on blue scalps. Times, Sunday Times
  • Some of the material will be familiar to readers who have kept up with this debate, but this volume is by no means a recapitulation of debates now worn threadbare by constant worrying.
  • The two are not unconnected as the pseudo-science that is "palaeoclimatology" looks evermore threadbare and the IPCC is finally exposed for the politically driven organisation it is, it becomes increasingly clear that "International Aid" when not used to line the pockets of corrupt dictators is used to fund the very organisations that take to the streets to lobby governments on climate change. Tony Blair: The Next Labour Prime Minister?
  • This is a club with boundless potential, but a split personality, with a strong team and a threadbare squad. Times, Sunday Times
  • There was a space on the floor between two tiger-skins where the matting was a little threadbare. The Winds of the World
  • The coat is worn threadbare.
  • Even James, the valet, looked tired and somewhat tatty in a threadbare jacket and fraying neckscarf.
  • The gaslights flickered softly, and as the time passed the surroundings no longer seemed faded and threadbare but rich and sumptuous.
  • Once inside a staircase, complete with threadbare carpet, leads to a landing.
  • The difference between the two first sentences is the difference between a high-spirited epic of self-assertion and a slender account of the threadbare ego.
  • The grey carpets were threadbare and the furniture was falling apart.
  • She sat cross-legged on a square of threadbare carpet.
  • The special effects are pretty stunning - considerably better than in the first film - but the pacing is leaden, the characterisation pretty slapdash and threadbare and, well, it's still a bit long…
  • The remainder of his costume consisted of a black cloth roundabout, threadbare and dirty; a pair of black casimere pantaloons, very tight about the legs and burst open in several places; and a pair of moccasins on his feet, adorned with beads and patches of red flannel. The Land of Thor
  • In my experience, this crowd tends to have botchy skin and threadbare beards and read too much =any Ayn Rand. NO BASEBALL HATS!!
  • ‘We are very religious,’ he said as he folded his threadbare deckchair and prepared to carry away their bulging bag of oddments.
  • During office hours, he tools around in threadbare denim shirts and old motorcycle jackets. Old Clothes
  • Pride may lurk under a threadbare cloak. 
  • I have spoken to three QCs involved in the hearings, and one has stated that he found some key pieces of evidence threadbare of credibility.
  • I sat somewhat nervously on a hard and threadbare seat in a tatty compartment, watching the last of the commuters run towards it and jump on.
  • It has high filigreed ceilings and threadbare carpet, a winding native wood staircase, cracked stained glass.
  • Sick of your threadbare old towels? Times, Sunday Times
  • Much more needs to be done if the already rickety and threadbare credibility of the Church is ever going to be restored.
  • In promoting these illusions, Mr Latham is accepting the threadbare propaganda of the neo-liberal social agenda.
  • Bangkok has dozens of rather dreary, threadbare hotels in the £10 - £30 range, while below and above that you can really get good value.
  • The film is set in a threadbare Australian ski resort at the fag-end of winter, well past the postcard stage.
  • Mazarin's numerous nieces, and the opera, that new importation from Italy, which the Cardinal was bringing into fashion; while in the remote past of half a dozen years back the Fronde was the only interesting subject, and even that was worn threadbare; the adventures of the Duchess, the conduct of the Prince in prison, the intrigues of Cardinal and Queen, Mademoiselle, yellow-haired Beaufort, duels of five against five -- all -- all these were ancient history as compared with young Louis and his passion for Marie de London Pride Or When the World Was Younger
  • Initially, capitalist market conditions were introduced into Russia under a somewhat threadbare banner of " democracy ".
  • His threadbare case further exposed the shabby deal.
  • Tugging at my neckcloth, I went to the washstand to be met in the mirror by a gangly figure in a threadbare tailcoat and homespun stockings more gray than white.
  • Tugging at my neckcloth, I went to the washstand to be met in the mirror by a gangly figure in a threadbare tailcoat and homespun stockings more gray than white.
  • While the pace contingent is threadbare, the spin section is overmanned.
  • And he was not to blame for the threadbare squad he inherited. The Sun
  • The furniture was threadbare; he'd obviously picked it up for nothing.
  • There is nothing grim or threadbare about either the building nor the attitude.
  • All Rights Reserved to Tooth & Nail Records Lyrics: on a cold December, just before dawn as the sun said "hello" to the sky the mantis prayed while the lamellicorn tumbled and rolled in a threadbare tie the holland lops in the Callicoon glades indignantly thumped their feet and hopped away when they cut their noses on the sharp-tipped blades (since the grass doesn't mind in the least) the heat pad waiting in the chicken-wire hutch where the does from the netherlands stay but that dry alfalfa don't taste like much and we're tired of the timothy hay WN.com - Business News
  • Once healthy, rich and famous, he now lives in a threadbare apartment, forced to sell his sporting trophies to feed his drug habit.
  • The memory of the late, mainly unlamented Crossroads, when the acting - under pressure - became as embarrassingly threadbare as the clothes, is fresh in many a soap addict's mind.
  • Her room had been the smallest and meanest in the old cenoby on Silver Street, with a ceiling that dripped at every shower; yet it had not been too small or too mean for a window past whose threadbare drape wisps of light crept on even the darkest nights. Exodus From The Long Sun
  • I awoke in the forenoon, pulled on my robe and sallied forth into the kitchen where I found my friend quite naked save for a pair of the most threadbare of undergarments.
  • The tiny models of the lagoon, the pen-and-ink drawings of ships on delicate paper and threadbare fabric motifs of bees embroidered in gold thread. Times, Sunday Times
  • The credibility of two of the leading actors of American monetary policy today is somewhat threadbare, to say the least.
  • Suddenly a sense of the difference between the week behind him, with all its ups and downs, its quarrels, its _ennuis_, its moments of delightful intimity, of artistic freedom and pleasure, and those threadbare, monotonous weeks into which he was to slip back on the morrow, awoke in him a mad inconsequent sting of disgust, of self-pity. Robert Elsmere
  • The cap is certainly too threadbare to be a public appearance prop.
  • The furniture was threadbare; he'd obviously picked it up for nothing.
  • Replied he, O Kings of the Age, the strangest thing that happened to me was that one day, two-and-twenty years ago, I snatched a girl who belonged to the Holy City; she was gifted with beauty and comeliness, despite that she was but a servant and was clad in threadbare clothes, with a piece of camlet-cloth on her head. The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night
  • Sorry, but even in summer it feels a bit chilly there, like a threadbare university club that only charter members find cozy.
  • Children, dressed in threadbare clothes and their arms laden with gifts, seemed oblivious to the steady patter of rain and surprised at their good fortune.
  • The methodology cobbled together by central banks and other financial regulators across Europe looks threadbare. Times, Sunday Times
  • It was almost like sleepwalking, feet soundless on the wood of the stairs, on the threadbare nursery carpet. SMOKE AND MIRRORS
  • Their palaces are shabby, with threadbare carpets and dreary flower arrangements. Times, Sunday Times
  • They have limp hair, threadbare coverings on blue scalps. Times, Sunday Times
  • The pose of disbelief is all the more threadbare given the facts on the ground in Iraq after more than three months of US military occupation.
  • When I first met Kevin, he was wearing his favourite blazer, a threadbare garment that fitted him ill, but you could spot him across the valley for it is a shockingly bright pink, accented with bilious green and yellow splotches.
  • Seeing only her face, not her threadbare coat, nor her worn shoes, he drew her back into his arms.
  • Blake endures the deprivation with a kind of threadbare resignation, saving his hostility for angry phone calls to his manager (Paul Herman). Review: Crazy Heart « Screaming Blue Reviews
  • He jogged and sailed in threadbare business suits and he drove an ancient convertible whose roof was held together with sticky tape. Times, Sunday Times
  • For example, SCOTUS has abandoned wide swaths of the law, as anywhere from 60–80% of its threadbare docket is dedicated to resolving conflicts between various courts of appeals, and it has abandoned any and all pretense of policing irregular, censurable, and otherwise outright cor�rupt decisions of our inferior appellate courts, with instances of pure error correction occurring so rarely as to be remarkable. The Volokh Conspiracy » Rosen on Sotomayor, Part Tres:
  • Raised in Cardonald, Glasgow, Mullan and his seven siblings were working class misfits in a grand but threadbare rented house.
  • I awoke in the forenoon, pulled on my robe and sallied forth into the kitchen where I found my friend quite naked save for a pair of the most threadbare of undergarments.
  • Surprisingly, it is a greatly-crafted piece, but due to the formula being recycled continuously since its original appearance, the messages are now somewhat threadbare, causing the play to lose its potency.
  • But then there are dainty green graffs in Saint Cuthbert's kirkyard, whare ane may sleep as if they were in a down-bed, till they hear the lavrock singing up in the air as high as the Castle; whereas, and behold, these London kirkyards are causeyed with through-stanes, panged hard and fast thegither; and my cloak being something threadbare, made but a thin mattress, so I was fain to give up my bed before every limb about me was crippled. The Fortunes of Nigel
  • The General Prologue portrait calls attention to Huberd's grand and dignified appearance, so unlike a cloisterer's or a scholar's threadbare looks.
  • The leather box was lined with sarsenet that Sharpe supposed had once been of royal purple, but was now so faded and worn as to be of the palest and most threadbare lilac. Sharpe's Rifles
  • At some point, though, the formula began to grow threadbare.
  • As I raced back to the threadbare offices, where we tapped out stories on half-sheets of paper hunched over manual typewriters, my adrenaline was pumping.
  • But his eyes were still bright, and his threadbare old khaki police uniform shirt still bore his many medals.
  • Devoid of Shane Julian and with Paul McDonald placed at midfield their defence was threadbare.
  • He despised formal ceremony and sometimes shocked foreign dignitaries by meeting them in his slippers or a threadbare jacket. America Past and Present
  • Pham, associate professor at Illinois University, Urbana-Champaign, and one of the self-proclaimed "clotheshorse academics" behind the Threadbared blog exploring the politics of fashion. Chinese models stride the catwalk as the west eyes China's rich fashion market
  • The clever, jazz-tinged arrangement of New Bond Street makes up for its threadbare lyrics.
  • Now maybe I can toss out those flesh-colored threadbare drawers of his that always give me a fright.
  • While the pace contingent is threadbare, the spin section is overmanned.
  • They've only got a five year-old softball bat, a threadbare cap, three scuffed balls and nine second-hand gloves from a flea market. POLITICAL HOT TOPICS: July 14, 2009
  • What parts of the floor weren't laid with threadbare rugs were scored and marked from claws.
  • Underneath were pictures of dockers' children in threadbare clothes.
  • The channels seem inhabitable if not for the threadbare mattresses and some out-of-place artwork on the walls. Las Vegas Author Matt O'Brien Exposes Plight Of Underground Homeless
  • The doctor handed her his card and twenty dollars in gold, and presently we were escorted to the little parlor with its odiferous atmosphere and tired trappings, where the ancient alienist huddled in his dressing gown beneath a threadbare blanket, shivering despite the robust fire dancing in the hearth. The Monstrumologist
  • To be sure, for all the rumor and threadbare analyses of plays, hard irrefutable proof of match fixing would be difficult to produce in any event.
  • To develop so strong a brand on so conspicuously threadbare a rationale is hugely creative – revolutionary even. 2009 January 26 | NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS
  • But I felt a pang of guilt as I recalled the threadbare state of Kedge-Lockaby's modest little hospital. Sagittarius Whorl
  • He jogged and sailed in threadbare business suits and he drove an ancient convertible whose roof was held together with sticky tape. Times, Sunday Times
  • It has high filigreed ceilings and threadbare carpet, a winding native wood staircase, cracked stained glass.
  • I had two dresses, one nightgown, three pair of undergarments and a thin, threadbare cloak.
  • Pride may lurk under a threadbare cloak. 
  • Their great old houses overflow with rough medieval furniture, threadbare tapestries and religious relics worn smooth by the touch of generations.
  • They've only got a five year-old softball bat, a threadbare cap, three scuffed balls and nine second-hand gloves from a flea market. POLITICAL HOT TOPICS: July 14, 2009
  • Last season, the Swans bench looked about as threadbare as the carpet in a sleazy nightclub. The Sun
  • For some years now, the chief executive's excuse that his or her job is simply to deliver for shareholders has looked increasingly threadbare. Times, Sunday Times
  • Yet puzzlingly, the threadbare portions had changed. Times, Sunday Times
  • Why does the owner of a castle wear a threadbare tweed? Times, Sunday Times
  • But on close inspection the Brown plans look pretty threadbare anyway.
  • Families eke out an existence in tiny shelters made from rubbish or threadbare canvas sheets. The Sun
  • The tiny models of the lagoon, the pen-and-ink drawings of ships on delicate paper and threadbare fabric motifs of bees embroidered in gold thread. Times, Sunday Times
  • A sluggish middle leads to a humorous and ironic ending as the dancers swap their threadbare garb for sequinned hipsters.
  • The language of artistic value has become threadbare.
  • There is apparently no one in his coterie who will point out to him that his nervous schlemiel is by now tired and threadbare and that he is no longer writing many funny lines.
  • Just while this disappointment was bearing heavy on his spirits, Butler comes before his imagination — no longer the half-starved threadbare usher, but fat and sleek and fair, the beneficed minister of The Heart of Mid-Lothian
  • Most of the decorating theft will come from Mr. Gili's own country house and studio in Piedmont: threadbare American flags as makeshift slipcovers, wall-mounted marlins next to Italian candelabras, starfish glued to marble mantels, grass-green window frames against blue walls, pillows tied with silk scarves. Looking at Rooms as Love Affairs
  • What we're left with is a threadbare story and a child who won't stop singing At the top of her voice All the time.
  • The bed had a thick straw pallet for mattress, and the sheets were threadbare and grubby, but they had slept on worse.
  • threadbare rugs
  • Last season, the Swans bench looked about as threadbare as the carpet in a sleazy nightclub. The Sun
  • Some are funny, some a little bit threadbare. Times, Sunday Times
  • He despised formal ceremony and sometimes shocked foreign dignitaries by meeting them in his slippers or a threadbare jacket. America Past and Present
  • Blue canvas shoes stirred up small puffs of soil, their toes threadbare and worn from the years of kicking the earth. Possum Woman
  • For, we never got over it; the threadbare Orrery outwore our mutual tenderness; the man with the wand was too much for the boy with the bow. The Uncommercial Traveller
  • This was a fact I informed her of as I emerged from the bathroom clutching a towel around me and dripping all over the maroon threadbare carpet.
  • There were'great arguments' over a threadbare carpet in the library. Times, Sunday Times
  • She wrapped her inadequate, threadbare cape more securely around herself and pulled the hood down a little more to keep out the biting wind.
  • Gentle, austere figures, dressed always in threadbare black A Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago
  • She stopped, then slowly walked over to stand in the middle of the large, round room, looking down at the threadbare rug.
  • His friends treated his threadbare bachelor apartment as a virtual drop-in centre.
  • There is little a performer can do with such threadbare material.
  • The tables were chipped, the carpet is threadbare, the seats have lost all their padding and comfort.
  • Families eke out an existence in tiny shelters made from rubbish or threadbare canvas sheets. The Sun
  • It would also be reassuring for an industry that might look perilously threadbare without him. Times, Sunday Times
  • Midfield looking a little threadbare? The Sun
  • repeating threadbare jokes
  • A tatty, threadbare curtain rises to the accompaniment of a circus drum-roll.
  • Honor had written to ask for some threadbare rugs to be replaced.
  • He certainly looked the part in a threadbare dressing gown, mirroring the unredeemed Scrooge's threadbare life.
  • Players have been released, leaving a threadbare squad, and the future of the academy is up in the air. The Sun
  • Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Jane Austen Gets Defensive
  • Candace Chesterwood tossed a stack of silk handkerchiefs and a lavender pomade into her threadbare carpetbag and closed the latches with an authoritative snap. FOR FASHION’S SAKE • by Fred Warren
  • Suddenly a sense of the difference between the week behind him, with all its ups and downs, its quarrels, its _ennuis_, its moments of delightful intimity, of artistic freedom and pleasure, and those threadbare monotonous weeks into which he was to slip back on the morrow, awoke in him a mad inconsequent sting of disgust, of self-pity. Robert Elsmere
  • Christian conservatism and hysterical anti-communism formed the parties' threadbare ideological framework and served to counterbalance various interests.
  • The bedding was threadbare, but freshly laundered and the floor appeared to have been fitted with a new carpet.
  • I think my wallet is looking a bit threadbare. Times, Sunday Times
  • Now maybe I can toss out those flesh-colored threadbare drawers of his that always give me a fright.
  • Their great old houses overflow with rough medieval furniture, threadbare tapestries and religious relics worn smooth by the touch of generations.
  • In contrast to the sophisticated zoophile undergarments I had witnessed in the back of the van, fake-Xander had plumped for threadbare yellowed boxers whose defining pattern of brown splodges one could only decipher the meaning of when the words above the crotch were read. The Defective Detective : The Curious Case of the Kilchester Courier
  • The allegations against Wahid were always threadbare pretexts for his removal from office.
  • The matrices tangle and entrap understandings of creation and knowledge to expose their threadbare construction.
  • Previous claims that the restoration of capitalism in the former USSR would bring democracy in its wake now look increasingly threadbare.
  • He and Ann, pausing unhappily outside in the hall, tiptoeing on the threadbare rug, could hear nothing from inside.
  • You can rent rustic cabins with great views; while some are a bit threadbare, they are all charming.
  • Pride may lurk under a threadbare cloak. 
  • My room is pretty threadbare right now, but Rebecca promised that tomorrow we will go buy furniture for me.
  • Hanford Burr's "Around the Fire" stories never grow old or threadbare.
  • The Cathedral is occupied 24/7 by pious parched and shriveled Indian women, barefoot and wrapped in threadbare Indian cloths, crawling the length of the nave on their knees, pleading with the larger than life suffering gesso Jesus hanging above the baroque red velvet elegance of the raised altar platform. San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas
  • I had not meant to spend any more money on the house, but I was worn threadbare from the discomfort of having no room of my own. Madeleine: An Autobiography
  • My clothes, which are getting more ripped and threadbare by the day, have taken on a distinct waft of sheep's lanolin, muck and diesel. Back to the land: from London to sheep farming on Eigg
  • The bed had a thick straw pallet for mattress, and the sheets were threadbare and grubby, but they had slept on worse.
  • The wind was bitter against his bare legs and feet, and it tore straight through his threadbare clothing.
  • A threadbare khadi jhola hangs over his shoulder, an umbrella in his hand.
  • It's a loser's game to milk ‘just one more ride’ out of worn brake pads, a frayed cable, or tires with a threadbare tread or bulging sidewall.
  • After the traumas and shortages of the war years the glen is a haven of peace, and a steady supply of milk, eggs, fish, mutton and venison goes a long way to make up for threadbare carpets and unmended pipes and the eccentricities of the plumbing. Rose cottage
  • Unfortunately, the Cole royal commission may also end up the perfect mechanism for destroying the already threadbare authority of royal commissions.
  • Both our little beds are a mishmash of sheets and blankets and threadbare pillows and the floor is covered in our old sports trophies and other such junk.
  • He frequently appeared in a threadbare and ragged cloak.
  • But the room wasn't sad and threadbare, it was full of people.
  • All three criticisms are looking increasingly threadbare. Times, Sunday Times
  • In the scramble to balance the books, the already threadbare provision for non-critical cases could be stripped away.
  • Oddly, as Hewitt and Garrett continue their colloquy, they seem to expose the threadbare nature of the story, except that they manage not to notice.
  • The threadbare carpets were covered by cheap rugs.

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