Vapid

(pronounced vap-id or vay-pid) adjective

Definition

1. lacking in enthusiasm, energy, animation, liveliness, or force; uninteresting; dull. 2. without taste, flavor, or stimulus; flat.

Main Example

Barely two months into the Donald Trump presidency, the Dept. of Homeland Security has already begun posting bids for the design and construction of a wall along the Mexican border; the new EPA chief, a climate change denier, is busy shredding many of the Obama-era regulations to fight global warming; and the inflow of immigrants from several Muslim nations has been reduced to a trickle, if not outright obstructed. No wonder Trump is enjoying full-throated support among those who voted for him. Anyone who thought the real estate mogul won the recent election on a bunch of vapid promises better think again.

Workplace Examples

I wonder if something is brewing on the executive floor, because during the entire operations review this morning, our vice president Lauren appeared to be distracted. She didn’t display any of her usual passion and intensity … the few comments she made were lifeless and rather vapid.
If you take any two movies that were made a few decades ago and became instant classics, chances are that while one of them may still be extremely resonant today, the other will barely touch a nerve. A case in point: the 1966 film “The Battle of Algiers” still has freshness and creates a sensation in the viewer whereas “All the King’s Men,” which swept the Oscars in 1949, is now somewhat vapid and does not strike a strong chord with most of today’s audiences.

Other Examples

this author saying: “The appropriate and judicious injection of just a handful of the words featured in my 3rd edition of ‘The Articulate Professional’ can help transform an otherwise humdrum and vapid presentation into something indelible and out-of-the-ordinary.” [Click here for sample pages and other information about the book]
a colleague commenting: “I noticed that Sherry didn’t have her heart and soul in her presentation. Went about it, sort of, vapidly. What do you think?”
a department manager confiding in someone: “I plan to stop having these boring weekly lunches with Doug, the other department manager here. There’s never an interesting question or comment from him; conversation with him is really quite vapid!”
vapid wine or vapid beer; vapid leadership; a new play being panned by critics because of its vapid characters; the vapid rhetoric and sloganeering of a candidate for political office turning off voters
in one of his darker moments, this author expressing the fear that our great nation’s political leadership will continue to be vapid for the foreseeable future thanks to a number of factors, including (i) the animosity between President Trump and some leading Republican senators; (ii) the bitter divide over policy within the Republican Party; and (iii) the intensifying mudslinging between Republican and Democrat lawmakers
the civil war in Syria, which has cost over 400,000 lives and generated the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, thanks to vapid international leadership