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During a conversation yesterday, I couldn't come up with the opposite of interesting.

"Initially she was very interesting, and I enjoyed her company. However, a few months later, she became [BUM] not interesting."

Not interesting is what I came up with. What is the opposite of interesting that I should have used?

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5 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

This site list a few antonym, from which my favourite in your context should be dull.

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up vote 13 down vote

There are loads of antonyms to "interesting". If you don't mind being blunt about a person (which is traditionally a problem if you're English) then my favourites, grouped according to similar implication, include:

  • Uninteresting (grammatically better than "not interesting")
  • Dull, boring
  • Common, undistinguished, unremarkable
  • Plain (of unexceptional appearance)
  • Ordinary (not exactly damning, but hardly a compliment)
  • Pedestrian, prosaic (similar to Ordinary, but slightly more insulting)
  • Tedious, insipid, banal, vapid (of uninteresting attitudes or actions)
  • Vanilla

I like Vanilla especially, as it's a colourful term to describe a distinct lack of uniqueness; it's used especially when referring to a lack of sexual adventurousness.

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Except "vanilla" is a noun. Sometimes people abbreviate the phrase "vanilla-flavored" and just say "vanilla ice cream", but you can't do that with things that have no flavor, vanilla or otherwise. ... Plus, I like vanilla. – Marthaª Nov 19 '10 at 22:01
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Poor, scorned vanilla. It's a unique, beautiful, and complex flavour, and people just kick it into the gutter as "generic" because of the ice cream industry in the 1970s. God damn them. – Jon Purdy Nov 20 '10 at 23:06
@Martha: vanilla started out as a noun, but through use in compounds acquired an adjectival sense, and is now definitely used as an adjective. OED comments “4. Passing into adj.: vanilla-coloured, vanilla-flavoured.” while more niche and less conservative lexica(?) list this more confidently. The jargon file is probably the canonical reference for this sense, though I don’t know whether it originated in hacker speak and was disseminated via the internet, or whether it was already mainstream slang in the years Before WWW. – PLL Jan 4 '11 at 2:47
For some reason this came up recently; someone didn't know that "vanilla" was used as an adjective meaning "plain". For this reason I think it's still mainly a geek thing. – slim Jan 3 '12 at 19:58
up vote 3 down vote

Stopped being interesting? Became boring, tiresome, or even a nuisance?

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+1 because "tiresome" was my thought too! – thesunneversets Nov 19 '10 at 17:50
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I'm starting to think this is actually a really interesting question. All of the answers so far have assumed that she stopped being interesting and became irritating. But what if she just stopped being interesting because you'd learned everything there was to learn about her, and the initial mystery and intrigue was gone? She hasn't become dull, or tiresome, or boring, as such; it's just that you have ceased to be an explorer of exciting new territory, and she is now a known quantity to you.

In this case you might be able to say "initially I found her interesting, but after a while she became over-familiar (and I grew bored)".

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up vote 0 down vote

Merriam Webster posts these antonyms:

  • boring
  • drab
  • dry
  • dull
  • heavy
  • monotonous
  • tedious
  • uninteresting
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