Word.ws English Dictionary

no bueno

/ˈnoʊ ˈbwɛ.noʊ/

no bueno adjective: not good; no good; bad.

Adjective

no bueno (not comparable)

  1. (US, humorous, informal, mildly) Not good; no good; bad.
    • So he held firm. “No bueno” on permanent charters, as one text message described his thinking.2025 December 12, Jeff Gluck, “NASCAR needs to move into the future. It’s time for CEO Jim France to step aside”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 16 Dec 2025
    • When I see people in a day dress and casual shoes or an outfit that looks like it came from work, no bueno.2026 May 20, Alexis Benveniste, “Jenna Lyons Has Thoughts on What You Should Wear to That Wedding”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Origin of no bueno

Pseudo-Hispanism, derived from no + bueno, a calque of no good. The closest equivalent to the adjective in Spanish is no estar bien (literally, “to not be good”); however it is a phrase rather than an adjective.

Questions about no bueno

What does no bueno mean?
No bueno means not good; no good; bad.
What part of speech is no bueno?
No bueno is an adjective.
How do you pronounce no bueno?
No bueno is pronounced /ˈnoʊ ˈbwɛ.noʊ/.

Words near no bueno in the dictionary

  1. no borax, no glue
  2. no brainer
  3. no brainers
  4. no brown in town
  5. no bucks, no Buck Rogers
  6. no bueno
  7. no buts
  8. no can do
  9. no cap
  10. no chance
  11. no changer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: no bueno (page history and authors). 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.

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Cite this entry: “no bueno.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/no_bueno. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.