Definition of "threadbare"

Such threadbare coats and trousers, such fusty gowns and shawls, such squashed hats and bonnets, such boots and shoes, such umbrellas and walking-sticks, never were seen in Rag Fair.

1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, chapter IX, in Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857

Unkempt, in threadbare clothes, with holed shoes and sun-cured hide, my costume is permanent: the traveler, the man from far away.

2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)

Holy Virgin stood in the main Convent of Glatz, in rather a threadbare condition, when the Prussians first approached; the Jesuits, and ardently Orthodox of both sexes, flagitating Heaven and her with their prayers, that she would vouchsafe to keep the Prussians out.

1858–1865, Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: Chapman and Hall, […]

But with so many tired, lazy callbacks to its own threadbare catalog (including “Love Is Not The Answer,” a watery echo of the epic “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” from 2003’s Permission To Land), Hot Cakes marks the point where The Darkness has stopped cannibalizing the golden age of stadium rock and simply started cannibalizing itself.

2012 August 21, Jason Heller, “The Darkness: Hot Cakes (Music Review)”, in The A.V. Club‎