“Bored” and “boring” are both adjectives that describe something that is not interesting or exciting. But they are used differently.
? If you watched a movie that wasn’t interesting, you can call it ‘boring’.
? If you want to describe how you feel about it you can say that you ‘were bored’ or ‘got bored’ of the movie.
? As you can see, ‘boring’ is used to describe someone or something.
A boring film, a boring person.
?While ‘Bored’ is used to describe what people feel when they lose interest in something or someone.
I’m so bored: there’s nothing to do.
➡️ ‘Boring’ usually goes before nouns – (a boring film, a boring person) or after pronouns (She is so boring! It was so boring!)
‘Boring’ answers the question ‘What kind of?’
➡️ ‘Bored’ is often used with verbs BE or GET.
I’m bored. Children get bored quickly.
‘Bored’ answers the question “How does a person feel?”
Use these formulas for ‘boring’ and ‘bored’.
A person/thing + BE + boring.
The movie was boring. You can also say “We watched a boring movie”.
A person + BE/GET + bored with/of + [someone/something].
I was bored with the movie.
A person + BE + bored with/of doing something
I was bored with doing my homework.
She was bored of playing chess.
Practice: Make your own sentences using the formulas:
______ is boring
____ be bored of/with _____
____ get bored of/with _____
Share your sentences in the comments.
By the way, the opposite of ‘boring’ is ‘interesting’, and the opposite of ‘bored’ is ‘interested’. You can read more about ‘interested’ vs ‘interesting’ in this post.
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Photo Credit: Priscilla Du Preez Unsplash.
