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.
Substituting raw wedges of tomato, which far too often can be floury and tasteless, for slow roasted plum tomatoes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 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", external 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
It is, admittedly, hard to reconcile the fact that something so unambiguously tasteless has provoked this confrontation.
From Slate ● Apr. 13, 2026
A tasteless soyburger, a lump of runny mashed potatoes, and some unrecognizable form of cobbler for dessert.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
