lackluster
UK/ˈlæklʌstə/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
British/ˈlaklʌstə/
lackluster adjective: lacking brilliance or intelligence.
Adjective
lackluster (comparative more lackluster, superlative most lackluster)
- Lacking brilliance or intelligence.
- Synonyms:
- simple, thick, addlebrained, addlepated, airheaded, bee-brained, beef-witted, soft, beefheaded, beetle-headed
- Having no shine or luster; dull.
- A faded, and an ancient dragon he was; and many a wintry storm of rain, snow, sleet, and hail, had changed his colour from a gaudy blue to a faint lack-lustre shade of gray.1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 3, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC, page 19
- He sat looking at her with lack-lustre eyes. The light suddenly came back into them.1885, William Dean Howells, chapter XIX, in The Rise of Silas Lapham
- Not exceptional; not worthy of special merit, attention, or interest; having no vitality.
- The actor gave a lackluster performance in his latest film.
- An allegedly true story emerges as a lackluster riff on American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street with a scrappy turn from an overly disguised lead star[.]2016 December 30, Jordan Hoffman, “Gold review – the priciest ore is a bore in Matthew McConaughey misfire”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 24 Aug 2019
- Synonyms:
- bloodless, tedious, middling, pedestrian, banal, basic, mindless, beat, blah, commonplace
Noun
lackluster (countable and uncountable, plural lacklusters)
- Lack of brightness or points of interest.
- A person or thing of no particular brilliance or intelligence.
lackluster meaning in Malayalam
lackluster in Malayalam
- uninspired, uninspiring, unimaginative
- തിളക്കമില്ലാത്ത, തെളിച്ചമില്ലാത്ത, തേജോഹീനമായ, പ്രഭയില്ലാത്ത, മങ്ങിയ, നിഷ്പ്രഭം
Examples of lackluster in a sentence
- The movie had great special effects, but the dialogue was lackluster.
- Her meteoric rise to power was followed by a slow, lackluster career at the top.
- The piano teacher's bored look indicated he wasn't paying much attention to his pupil's lackluster rendition of Mozart's Requiem.
Synonyms of lackluster
- simple
- thick
- addlebrained
- addlepated
- airheaded
- bee-brained
- beef-witted
- soft
- beefheaded
- beetle-headed
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- birdbrained
- blockheaded
- Boeotian
- boneheaded
- boofheaded
- braindead
- brainless
- bubbleheaded
- buffle-headed
- bullet-headed
- cerebrally challenged
- childish
- chowderheaded
- chuckleheaded
- crackbrained
- cretinous
- daft
- dense
- dented
- dim-bulb
- dim-headed
- dim-witted
- dim
- doltish
- dopey
- dozy
- drowsy
- dull-headed
- dull-minded
- dull-witted
Forms of lackluster
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more lackluster |
| superlative | most lackluster |
| alternative UK | lack-lustre |
| alternative UK | lacklustre |
| Noun | |
| plural | lacklusters |
Origin of lackluster
From lack + luster.
Words formed from lackluster
Phrases with lackluster
Questions about lackluster
- What does lackluster mean?
- Lackluster means lacking brilliance or intelligence.
- What is lackluster in Malayalam?
- Lackluster in Malayalam is തിളക്കമില്ലാത്ത, തെളിച്ചമില്ലാത്ത, തേജോഹീനമായ. See Lackluster meaning in Malayalam.
- What part of speech is lackluster?
- Lackluster can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce lackluster?
- Lackluster is pronounced /ˈlæklʌstə/ (UK).
Words near lackluster in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: lackluster (page history and authors); lackluster (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-lackluster.ogg.
Cite this entry: “lackluster.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lackluster. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.