Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Deficient in melody; not tuneful.
  • adjective Producing no music; silent.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Unmusical; inharmonious.
  • Not employed in or not capable of making music.
  • Not expressed rhythmically or musically; silent; without voice or utterance.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Without tune; inharmonious; unmusical.
  • adjective Not employed in making music.
  • adjective rare Not expressed in music or poetry; unsung.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Having no pleasing tune; not tuneful.
  • adjective Silent or mute.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective not having a musical sound or pleasing tune

Etymologies

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Examples

  • But then "Spin" had to be sung by bassist Tracy Wormworth when Patty went M.I.A., during exhaustive recording sessions in England (Tracey had also recorded the title track, which some people actually prefer, but then Patty did her own take and that was used.) "Pleasure" is an unnecessary instrumental (were vocals dropped when Patty vanished?) and "They're All Out of Liquor, Let's Find Another Party" is a great title, but the song is as humorless as it is tuneless, which is everything the Waitresses were not.

    kenneth in the (212) 2009

  • Once the show actually begins, it's obvious that writers Craig Christie and Andrew Patterson have done their homework - with the likes of Sweden represented by a perky Abba-style quartet, the UK by a couple of chavvy singers with a pointless ballad, Iceland by a Bjork-alike singing a tuneless, meaningless song.

    Blogposts | guardian.co.uk 2008

  • The fans found their voice; by the end they were hollering constantly in a good-natured but rather shambolic and tuneless way, like drunks attempting a full run-through of La Traviata on the way home from the pub.

    Ronnie O'Sullivan crowned prince of the new Power Snooker generation Simon Burnton 2010

  • Sure, Ellery James Roberts might just be the most tuneless singer you've heard all year.

    Mark Morford: The Top 10 Most Awesome Albums of 2011 Mark Morford 2011

  • Their song, if one can name it such, is a tuneless ditty of five notes that seems somehow tentative and spiritless.

    Country diary: Claxton, Norfolk 2011

  • The footage of working men's clubs during the 60s and 70s is especially brilliant: the delicate etiquette of how older workers got to stand on the carpet and the younger ones further out on the lino, women contained in "the snug", mainly on Fridays, with a bottle of Sweetheart Stout and other abandoned wives to chat to; a tuneless club singer honking out an approximation of Frank Sinatra to moist-eyed, Brylcreem-sodden men.

    Grace Dent: The Rules of Drinking 2012

  • Sure, Ellery James Roberts might just be the most tuneless singer you've heard all year.

    Mark Morford: The Top 10 Most Awesome Albums of 2011 Mark Morford 2011

  • When I began, I was awful; my wife described me as "cute, but tuneless."

    Guitar Tricks for a Middle-Aged Dog Gary Marcus 2011

  • The first bossa nova vocalist that most of us heard was Astrud Gilberto , who gave the world the false impression that Brazilians sang in a mono-dynamic, largely tuneless voice, free from inflection or tonal color.

    Blues From Brazil to China Will Friedwald 2011

  • She was singing a tuneless little song, over and over again.

    Red Flags or Red Herrings? Susan Engel 2011

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