beat a dead horse

present singular third person beats a dead horse · participle present beating a dead horse · participle past beaten a dead horse · alternative flog a dead horse

1. idiomaticTo persist or continue far beyond any purpose, interest or reason.

   After having shown us three hours of instructional and safety videos, the inspector was simply beating a dead horse by telling us to buckle up as we got into the van.

   3 more examples

   The library director believes the argument about “professionalism” is a “dead horse we should stop beating.”

   1992, William A. Katz, Reference Services and Reference Processes, McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 220

   A friend, the political scientist Irving Bernstein, told me that political scientists and historians are inclined to regard the question of objectivity as a dead horse that one should stop beating, and maintained that it is not the scholar but the lay person who has problems with objectivity.

   1999, Fredrick Carl Redlich, Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page xii

   I won’t stop beating this dead horse until (male) TV executives stop this sexist practice.

   2016, Anthony Livingston Hall, The iPINIONS Journal: Commentaries on the Global Events of 2015, volume XI, iUniverse, →ISBN