Second-hand synonyms

Their value has usually been placed very low by the special followers of the sciences concerned; they say that the knowledge is second-hand, is not coherent, and is too confidently taken for final.

His chief philosophical importance consists in the fact that he was a leader in the attempt to revivify French philosophy by the new thought of Germany, to which he had been introduced by Cousin, but of which he never had more than a second-hand knowledge.

Mme de Stael's faults are great; her style is of an age, not for all time; her ideas are mostly second-hand and frequently superficial.