tasteless
Americanadjective
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having no taste or flavor; insipid.
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dull; uninteresting.
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lacking in aesthetic quality or capacity; devoid of good taste.
a houseful of tasteless furnishings; a tasteless director of stale, dreary films.
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lacking in politeness, seemliness, tact, etc.; unmannerly; insensitive.
a tasteless remark.
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lacking the physical sense of taste.
adjective
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lacking in flavour; insipid
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lacking social or aesthetic taste
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rare unable to taste
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of tasteless
Explanation
Something that's tasteless is either very bland, like a plain baked potato with no seasoning, or it's tacky and inappropriate, like the tasteless jokes your uncle likes to tell at Thanksgiving. If your tuna casserole is tasteless, you should add some salt and pepper. If your relative is tasteless, that's a trickier problem to solve. In the latter case, tasteless means "lacking in judgment" or "offensive." So a joke that hurts someone's feelings is tasteless, and wearing a dress made out of rubbish you found in the recycling bin to your cousin's wedding would also be tasteless — unless the wedding's theme is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle."
Vocabulary lists containing tasteless
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But Disney has shareholders to serve, and obviously intends to extract all it can from every piece of intellectual property it owns, no matter how creatively corrupting and tasteless the endeavor might be.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
Some critics have called Your Fault: London clichéd, unnecessary and "fanfiction-like" - Variety said the first film in the trilogy was "a trashy gimmick" and a "tasteless" adaptation of "tawdry teen literature".
From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2026
“Scary Movie” would, apparently, be a return to the button-pushing, tasteless humor that defined a generation but was now outmoded by wokeness.
From Salon ● Jun. 11, 2026
That some things are tasteless not because they’re uncool, per se, but because they are, as Hayao Miyazaki once said, “an insult to life itself.”
From Slate ● Apr. 23, 2026
I had no idea what I was eating; it was completely tasteless.
From "Courage to Soar" by Simone Biles
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