old wine in a new bottle
1
7.5
- idiom
- Informal
Examples
-
But the Baruch case shows what "diversity" truly means; it is simply old wine in new bottles.
Academic text (1990) -
The new marketing campaign is just old wine in a new bottle, repackaging ideas that have been used before.
-
Critics claim that his latest proposal is merely old wine in a new bottle, as it fails to introduce fresh solutions.
-
Many believe that the reforms are old wine in a new bottle, offering the same policies with different terminology.
Synonyms
9
7.1
Not interesting or fashionable because people have seen it before
6
6.2
A work made from old ideas with only small changes
An idea or work copied from before that feels old and not new
Antonyms
- Informal
1
8.6
New ideas put into an old way that do not bring real change
How Original
Surface Forms
Morphology
old + wine + in + a + new + bottle
The phrase maps literal constituents (old wine = existing content; new bottle = new packaging) onto a familiar metaphor of repackaging the same idea, so a learner who knows the words can often infer the intended meaning. Because understanding requires making a figurative mapping rather than simple compositional combination—and some learners may not automatically apply that metaphor—this is partly but not fully transparent.
Etymology
Old wine in a new bottle comes from the picture of pouring old wine into a clean new bottle so it looks fresh and different. That's why it means a familiar idea or product shown as 'new' even though it is really the same.