| 1. | He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. - from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde |
| 2. | It was not very threadbare even now. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| 3. | A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller. - from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare |
| 4. | thin poorly Full threadbare was his overest courtepy. - from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer |
| 5. | Ah you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache but you won't find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. - from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens |
| 6. | He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. - from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad |
| 7. | Sowerberry was a tall gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a suit of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same colour, and shoes to answer. - from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens |
| 8. | Lo, thus by smelling and threadbare array, If that men list, this folk they knowe may. - from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer |
| 9. | They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough-bass and human nature and had some extracts to admire, and some new observations of threadbare morality to listen to. - from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen |