- 1空洞乏味、言之無物（不是「難看」，是「沒有內容」）
Vapid describes something that has nothing inside it — no ideas, no feeling, no interest. A vapid film is one you forget while you are still walking out of the cinema. A vapid conversation is thirty minutes of talking where nothing was really said. A vapid smile is a smile with no thought or warmth behind it, just the face doing its job.
The important thing is what kind of criticism this is. Vapid does not mean bad in a loud way. A terrible film can be ; a vapid one is just empty. It is not stupid either, exactly — a vapid person may speak fluently and look fine, but nothing they say has any weight. That is what makes the word cutting. You are saying: there is no there there.
It is a formal, written word. Critics use it about films, songs, books, speeches, and famous people. In everyday speech students are more likely to hear "empty", "boring", or "there's nothing to it". If you say vapid out loud in a casual chat, it sounds educated and a little cold.
One more note: it is quite a rude word about a person. Calling a film vapid is normal criticism. Calling a person vapid says they have no inner life. Be careful where you point it.
組成Borrowed from Latin vapidus, meaning 'flat' — originally used of wine that has lost its taste, gone flat and lifeless. That flat-drink image is still the heart of the word: something that should have flavour but has none.
同家族的字
- vaporboth go back to Latin vapor 'steam' — vapidus is what is left when the good part has steamed away
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
VAPIDadj
- 1
An acronym for remembering undesirable characteristics for goal-setting: vague, amorphous, pie-in-the-sky, irrelevant, delayed/disassociated.
- One of the things that Paterson talks about is VAPID goals. He says that “VAPID goals are what we often set if we’re not thinking about it”.
- SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely goals, whereas VAPID goals are Vague, Amorphous, Pie-in-the-sky, Irrelevant, Dissociated goals.
vapidadj/ˈvæp.ɪd/
- 1
Offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging.
- In Koons' best-known works—a life-sized poly-chromed wood replica of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp Bubbles; vapid fin de siècle readymades such as a trio of basketballs floating in a fishtank […]
- 2
Lifeless, dull, or banal.
- Then there was a little more trite conversation between Mr. Arabin and Mr. Harding; trite, and hard, and vapid, and senseless.
- 3
Tasteless, bland, or insipid.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。