These words refer to what is offensive to good taste because of its want of sense, significance or freshness. Banal , most strictly, refers to something that is so commonplace that it lacks freshness: jokes, hoary-headed with age. But the word has gathered connotations that go beyond this strict meaning, referring to an odious or deplorable lack of taste: another season of banal television programmes.

Both insipid and vapid , like the Latin words from which they come can literally refer to foods that lack savour. In applying to what is tasteless or gauche, both words also point to staleness, flatness, or want of spirit. They are often thought to be interchangeable, but subtle differences between them can be felt. Insipid is especially pertinent for describing instances of expression or behaviour suggesting weakness or feebleness; this contrasts it with banal , which suggests outrageous bad taste: choosing between the insipid dullness of a drawing-room comedy and the banal mediocrity of a musical extravaganza. Vapid , on the other hand, might be thought more pertinent to describing a whole personality, one of limited mentality: a vapid starlet who kept making insipid remarks about the weather. Vapid, when it describes behaviour rather than character, often suggests patent insincerity: thanking him with a vapid smile.

Unlike the foregoing, jejune and inane are less concerned with something that has lost its freshness than with something that reveals a total lack of substance to begin with. Jejune derives from a Latin word meaning hungry and applies emphatically to what is worthless and uninteresting.

• This play cannot be called banal , considering its novelty, nor insipid , considering its liveliness, nor vapid , considering its sensitivity; nevertheless, it is utterly unstimulating and jejune in every particular.

Inane derives from a word meaning empty and refers to something that is regarded as worthless because it lack sense to the point of becoming foolish or silly: attempts at flattery that would be laughable if they weren’t so inane . Jejune can also suggest an enduring state of mental exhaustion or emptiness: grimly resigning herself to the jejune patterns of suburban living. Because of confusion with jejune , the French word for young, the word is also used disapprovingly to indicate immaturity or naïvetè: jejune teen-age fads. Fatuous is an intensification of inane in that it adds a suggestion of self-contented smugness to the silliness suggested by inane : a fatuous grin that revealed how witty she imagined her inane remark to be.

ANYONYMS: meaningful, significant.