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Glite Dictionary
🤪 Ridiculous or nonsense 😑 Bored or pointless
bo liao

bo liao

9.9
Silly and not believable
  • adjective
  • Philippine
translation icon : ridículo
  • That plan is bo liao; nobody will take it seriously in a professional meeting.

Examples

  • Don't follow his advice—it's clearly bo liao and will only waste your time.

  • The article made so many unsupported claims that I found it rather bo liao.

  • That excuse is just bo liao.

  • Why would you believe such bo liao stories?

  • His argument was completely bo liao; no one in the room could take it seriously.

  • Don't believe her rumors—they are just bo liao and have no basis in reality.

  • The movie was so bo liao that we left the theater halfway through.

Antonyms

credible
267 4.2

Something that seems true and that people can trust

sensible
201 2.7

Showing good judgment and making practical choices

How Ridiculous

ludicrous
100 6.0
absurd
288 4.4
bo liao
  • Philippine
9.9
silly
976 1.0

Surface Forms

bo liao positive

Morphology

bo + liao

Bo liao is Singlish/Hokkien slang whose parts ('bo' and 'liao') are not English words and have no dictionary definitions here, so an English B1 learner who only knows the constituent items in English would have no basis to infer the meaning. The expression is language-specific and idiomatic (its sense is predictable only to speakers familiar with Hokkien or Singlish), making it unpredictable from the parts and therefore opaque to most learners.

Etymology

Bo liao is also used for things that are pointless or silly because bo means 'no' and liao means 'point'. If an idea has 'no point', people call it bo liao, which is why it can mean 'ridiculous', 'foolish', or 'nonsense' today.