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
- tastelessly adverb
- tastelessness noun
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.
It is, admittedly, hard to reconcile the fact that something so unambiguously tasteless has provoked this confrontation.
From Slate • Apr. 13, 2026
“I apologize and regret putting myself in a position where emails, some of them embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible, are now public, and that is on me,” Attia wrote.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 4, 2026
Neither in the movie nor in the musical do these vividly tasteless and self-regarding figures come across as appealing, although the musical does succeed in softening them with humor and amplifies Jackie’s backstory.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 10, 2025
But speech that is tasteless has always been protected by the First Amendment.
From Salon • Sep. 19, 2025
It was a relief not to see everything in terms of tasteless decline—it easily becomes a habit of age.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
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.
