Language tip of the week: bored

In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. In this series of language tips to accompany the Real Vocabulary theme we look at how you can expand your vocabulary in English by using different words and expressions instead of core vocabulary items.

This set of language tips will explore different ways to talk about emotions. This week’s tip looks at words and phrases you can use to talk about feeling bored:

I’m so bored! ♦ Steve was already bored with the game. ♦ I get really bored of my same-thing-every-day diet. ♦ She gave him a bored look.

Although some people think bored of is incorrect, it is being used more and more frequently and is especially common in informal English.

There are several phrases you can use to say that someone is extremely bored:

bored rigid/silly/stiff/witless:
Jenny hates her current job because she is bored rigid all the time. ♦ Little kids would be bored silly by this film.
bored to death/to tears:
I was bored to death most of the time at school.
dying of boredom:
Listening to the radio is great to keep you from dying of boredom on long trips.