same old story
7
3.7
- idiom
- Informal
:
la misma historia de siempre
- After years of hoping for change, she realized it was just the same old story repeating itself.
- Always the same old story
Each of the game benchmarks seems to tell the same old story of incremental performance bumps.
- Each of the game benchmarks seems to tell the same old story of incremental performance bumps.
Examples
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I tried to help them, Tiffany, but in the end, it's the same old story.
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Sounds like all she's saying is that now that it's affecting the white/affluent neighborhood, maybe the city will get tough on gangs since they seemed to care little about the quality of life for Latinos and poor people (same old story).
Blog text (24) -
It's always the same old story with you, John.
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It's the same old story and you know it.
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It's the same old story all the time!
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It's always the same old story.
Fiction book (2000) -
It's the same old story of how I dread teaching and then I teach and I find I love it.
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The fan base is likely irreparably crushed, as their belief in a changed organization switched quickly to the "same old story" with one trade.
Blog text (14) -
Each of the game benchmarks seems to tell the same old story of incremental performance bumps.
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So it is always the same old story; it seems that almost everything is mechanically feasible but not necessarily cost-effective.
Blog text (21)
Synonyms
132
1.0
An event that happens again in the same way
33
5.8
A common idea or pattern found in stories and films
24
5.0
An event or problem that happens again, often at regular times
4
7.9
A story or joke people tell so often that it becomes boring
1
5.8
Something that happens again
Antonyms
How Repetitive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'same' (unchanged), 'old' (familiar/not new) and 'story' (a repeated narrative or situation), so a learner who knows the constituents can infer it denotes a familiar, recurring and tiresome situation. This compositional pattern is common cross-linguistically (e.g. Spanish 'la misma historia'), making it readily predictable for B1 learners.
Etymology
Same old story comes from the picture of a storyteller who tells the very same, old story again and again, so listeners become bored because they already know how it ends. That's why we use it to say something 'happens again and again' or is predictable and tiring.