The phrase "trite idea" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe an idea that is overused and lacks originality or freshness.
Example: "The plot of the movie was based on a trite idea that we've seen countless times before."
Alternatives: "clichéd concept" or "banal notion."
There is not a trite idea or note on this collection of songs – the only disappointment is that it is too short.
People like Tillman – biblically bearded, snappy dressers, living complicated musicianly lives – sneer at the trite idea of true love, at conventional monogamy and then: bam.
The real achievement of the Water Cube is less its technical wizardry than the transformation of the faintly trite idea of a bubble building into a piece of elegant, enigmatic architecture.
Anyway, not all trite ideas are wrong.
Although an undistinguished provincial doctor and something of a philistine, Charles stands apart from the other townsfolks' affectations, trite ideas and vicious prejudices.
A trite received idea — America means laid-back egalitarianism and England hidebound hierarchy — is sometimes near the reverse of the case.
"It's so trite, the idea that you can take the guy out of New York, but you can't take New York out of the guy," he said, smiling.
Yet much of what we call poetry consists of trite or false ideas in sublime language.
So many people, certainly people who sit around the cabinet table, say, 'Well, it worked for me' or, 'This is how my father managed it' – these trite catchphrases – and the idea that other people might have had such a different life experience that their choices and beliefs and behaviours would be completely different from your own seems to escape a lot of otherwise intelligent people.
Both Gerrold and Coon thought the idea was "trite... shtick... hokey" and "had been done before".
"The use of the language is not very imaginative; the ideas are trite".
