become threadbare

“His legacy could become threadbare.”

Some are making clothes that are so irresistible customers will want to wear them forever, or at least until they become threadbare.

To their credit, McMasters and Kahn do not trumpet the diverse backgrounds of the authors they are lucky enough to publish — and they might have; the d-word has been tossed around so much it’s become threadbare.

But the civil designation of deportation hearings is tied to a 125-year-old Supreme Court decision whose moorings have become threadbare with the passage of time, as America’s immigration apparatus has become more and more indistinguishable from our criminal armament.

The house had become threadbare from the Johnsons’ five years of incessant entertaining and the influx of seven million tourists after John F. Kennedy’s death.