Bland
adj, name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Mixture; union. UK, countable, dialectal, uncountable
- 2 A summer beverage prepared from the whey of churned milk, common among the inhabitants of the Shetland Islands. countable, uncountable
- 1 To mix; blend; mingle. UK, dialectal, transitive
- 2 To connect; associate. UK, dialectal, transitive
- 1 Having a soothing effect; not irritating or stimulating.
"a bland oil"
- 2 Lacking in taste or flavor.
"The coffee was bland."
- 3 Lacking in vigor.
"First and foremost, alternative country artists generally claim to reject mainstream country music as musically indistinguishable from bland pop music, as lyrically superficial, and as having no artistic merit […]"
- 4 Lacking interest; boring; dull. figuratively
"bland comment"
- 5 Mild; soft, gentle, balmy; smooth in manner; suave. archaic
"Where didst thou find, young Bard, thy sounding lyre? / Where the bland accent, and the tender tone?"
- 1 smoothly agreeable and courteous with a degree of sophistication wordnet
- 2 lacking stimulating characteristics; uninteresting wordnet
- 3 lacking taste or flavor or tang wordnet
- 1 A surname.
- 2 A small city in Gasconade County and Osage County, Missouri, United States.
- 3 A census-designated place, the county seat of Bland County, Virginia, United States.
- 4 A local government area (Bland Shire) in the Riverina region, New South Wales, Australia.
- 5 A locality in the Bland council area, central New South Wales, Australia.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples""Well, it's hot again today, isn't it?" "That's one more time you've started with a bland topic.""
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin blandus (“pleasant, flattering”).
From Middle English blanden, blonden, from Old English blandan (“to blend, mix, mingle; trouble, disturb, corrupt”), from Proto-Germanic *blandaną (“to mix, blend”). Cognate with Icelandic blanda, Norwegian, Danish blande, Swedish blanda. See also blend.
From Middle English bland, from Old English bland, blond (“blending, mixture, confusion”), from Proto-Germanic *blandą (“a mixing, mixture”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰlendʰ- (“to grow turbid, dim, see badly, be blind”). Cognate with Icelandic blanda (“a mixture of liquids, especially of hot whey and water”).
Related phrases
More for "bland"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.