Language tip of the week: people and things that are boring

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 ways of talking about people, events or situations that are boring:

a bore someone who talks too much about things that are not interesting to anyone else:
Her husband is such a bore. ♦ cocktail party bores who only want to talk about themselves
a bore a boring activity or situation:
I find housework a real bore.
a drag someone or something that is boring:
Work is a bit of a drag at the moment. ♦ It’s such a drag having to get two buses to school. ♦ I’m sorry to be a drag, but could you check this again?
a yawn someone or something that is boring:
The film was a complete yawn.

All these words are more common in spoken English, with bore being the least informal. While bore meaning ‘boring person’ can be used in the plural, the other meanings shown here are generally used only in the singular.

Did you know that Macmillan Dictionary includes a full thesaurus? This page lists more ways to say that someone is boring while this page lists other words for boring places and things.