dullness

dull

 (dŭl)

adj. dull·er, dull·est

1.

a. Arousing little interest; lacking liveliness; boring: a dull movie.

b. Not brisk or rapid; sluggish: Business has been dull.

2. Not having a sharp edge or point; blunt: a dull knife.

3.

a. Not intensely or keenly felt: a dull ache.

b. Not bright, vivid, or shiny: a dull brown; a glaze with a dull finish.

c. Cloudy or overcast: a dull sky.

d. Not clear or resonant: a dull thud.

4. Intellectually weak or obtuse; stupid.

5. Lacking responsiveness or alertness; insensitive: half-asleep and dull to the noises in the next room.

6. Dispirited; depressed: a dull mood.

tr. & intr.v. dulled, dull·ing, dulls

To make or become dull.

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[Middle English dul; akin to Old English dol.]

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dull′ish adj.

dull′ness, dul′ness n.

dul′ly adv.

Synonyms: dull, colorless, drab¹, humdrum, lackluster, pedestrian, stodgy, uninspired
These adjectives mean lacking in liveliness, charm, or surprise: a dull, uninteresting performance; a colorless and unimaginative person; a drab and boring job; a humdrum conversation; a lackluster life; a pedestrian movie plot; a stodgy dinner party; an uninspired lecture.

Antonym: lively

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Dullness

 

See Also: BOREDOM/BORING

1. About as exciting as broccoli —Fred Barnes, “McLaughlin Group” television broadcast, December 29, 1986
2. About as exciting as a ride on a stone camel —Anon
3. As much personality as a paper cup —Raymond Chandler about the city of Los Angeles

   In his essay The Country Behind the Hill, critic Clive James explains that this was intended as a positive simile, reflecting Chandler’s fascination with the city’s seediness.

4. Bland as a Bloody Mary without tabasco —Anon
5. Bland as a martini without a twist of lemon —Anon
6. Bland as hominy grits —Frederick Exley
7. Blunt as ignorance —Samuel Rowley
8. (The place was) dead as a ghost-town cemetery —Douglas Adams

   In his novel, The Fourth Widow, Adams extends the simile as follows: “And nowhere near as pretty.”

9. (The place seemed to be as … ) dead as a Pharaoh —Raymond Chandler
10. Dreary as an empty house —Gustave Flaubert
11. Dreary as an old dishrag —Anon, capsule movie review in New York Times television listings
12. Dreary as a Russian love story —William Diehl
13. Dry as the Congressional Record —James J. Montague
14. (Lies … ) dull and senseless as a stone —Elizabeth Barrett Browning
15. Dull as a jail cell —Ira Wood
16. (A day as) dull as a lead nickel —John Wainwright
17. (A brown macrame wall hanging) dull as dirt —Patricia Henley
18. Dull as pig shit —Ethel Merman, about her friend Benay Venuta’s Jewish society friends
19. Dull as brushing your teeth —Anon
20. Dull as ditch-water —Charles Dickens

    An everyday expression modernized to “Dull as dishwater.”

21. (When he is gone, the world will be) dull as Mars —Lorrie Moore
22. (The road north is … ) dull like a camel plodding through the desert —Anon
23. Dull … like a cookbook written by someone who doesn’t like food —Pat Conroy
24. An eternal sameness, like a blank wall —Robert Silverberg
25. Flat and insipid as a pancake —Anatole France

    Anatole France loved proverbs, and so this extension of familiar wisdom.

26. [About an experience someone is relating] flat as the telling at breakfast of an ecstatic dream —Stella Benson
27. Had the personality of a dried-out fart —Anon
28. Interesting as boiled potatoes —Anon
29. Interesting as staring at a blank wall —Anon
30. Interesting as watching paint dry —Dee Weber
31. Life as humdrum as that of a country curate —W. Somerset Maugham
32. Life … devoid of incident as the longest of Trollope’s novels —O. Henry
33. Life here is as calm as a gold-fish tank with one half-animate inmate: me —Julia O’Faolain
34. Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale —William Shakespeare
35. Looked dreary, like a theater before anybody comes —Mark Twain
36. Looked like she had the IQ of a well-mannered houseplant —A. E. Maxwell
37. Mind … slept and snored like a full dog by the fire —George Garrett
38. Monotonous as a sailor’s chantey —Raymond Chandler
39. Monotonous like water dripping on sandstone —John MacDonald
40. My life is as flat as the table I write on —Gustave Flaubert
41. A new idea made its way into her mind with much difficulty, as if it had to traverse the meshes of a choked sieve —Stefan Zweig
42. Numb as a potato —Daniel Asa Rose
43. Obtuse as an ocelot —Gregory McDonald
44. Personality like a cup of yogurt —Pat Conroy
45. Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within —Honoré de Balzac
46. Seemed dull … as simple as a three-headed treasure-guarding troll —Anon
47. (The people who surrounded him) seemed like white bread, inexcusably bland —Phillip Lopate
48. Shadowy and uninteresting as an event in an outdated and long-unread novel —Gillian Tindall

    The frame of reference for the comparison is a brief, long-ago marriage.

49. There are some things so dull they hypnotize like the pendulum of a clock —Karl Shapiro
50. Tiresome as virtue —Edith Wharton
51. Too dull —no stir, no storm, no life about it … like being part dead and part alive, both at the same time —Mark Twain

    The condition thus described in Twain’s story, Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, is that of running a grocery store.

52. Unconscious as a face of stone —H. W. Hudson
53. (His friends were as) uninteresting as the dead —Rumer Godden
54. Void of life as a block of ice —Patricia Henley

Similes Dictionary, 1st Edition. © 1988 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	dullness - the quality of being slow to understand obtuseness stupidity - a poor ability to understand or to profit from experience oscitance, oscitancy - drowsiness and dullness manifested by yawning
	2.	dullness - the quality of lacking interestingness; "the stories were of a dullness to bring a buffalo to its knees" uninterestingness - inability to capture or hold one's interest boringness, dreariness, insipidity, insipidness - extreme dullness; lacking spirit or interest tediousness, tiresomeness, tedium - dullness owing to length or slowness jejunity, tameness, vapidity, vapidness, jejuneness - the quality of being vapid and unsophisticated
	3.	dullness - a lack of visual brightness; "the brightness of the orange sky was reflected in the dullness of the orange sea" visual property - an attribute of vision subduedness, dimness - the property of lights or sounds that lack brilliance or are reduced in intensity lusterlessness, lustrelessness, matt, matte, flatness, mat - the property of having little or no contrast; lacking highlights or gloss brightness - the location of a visual perception along a continuum from black to white
	4.	dullness - lack of sensibility; "there was a dullness in his heart"; "without him the dullness of her life crept into her work no matter how she tried to compartmentalize it." callousness, unfeelingness, callosity, insensibility, hardness - devoid of passion or feeling; hardheartedness
	5.	dullness - without sharpness or clearness of edge or point; "the dullness of the pencil made his writing illegible" bluntness obtuseness - the quality of lacking a sharp edge or point shape, configuration, conformation, contour, form - any spatial attributes (especially as defined by outline); "he could barely make out their shapes" asperity, sharpness - harshness of manner keenness, sharpness - thinness of edge or fineness of point

Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

dullness

noun

1. tediousness, monotony, banality, flatness, dreariness, vapidity, insipidity the dullness of their routine life
tediousness interest, colour, liveliness

2. stupidity, thickness, slowness, dimness, obtuseness, doziness (Brit. informal), dim-wittedness, dopiness (slang) his dullness of mind
stupidity intelligence, brightness, sharpness, cleverness, quickness, smartness

3. drabness, greyness, dimness, gloominess, dinginess, colourlessness the dullness of an old painting
drabness brilliance, brightness, shine, sparkle, incandescence, effulgence

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

dullness

also dulness
noun

1. A deficiency in mental and physical alertness and activity:

hebetude, languidness, languor, lassitude, leadenness, lethargy, listlessness, sluggishness, stupor, torpidity, torpor.

2. A lack of excitement, liveliness, or interest:

asepticism, blandness, colorlessness, drabness, dreariness, dryness, flatness, flavorlessness, insipidity, insipidness, jejuneness, lifelessness, sterileness, sterility, stodginess, vapidity, vapidness, weariness.

The American Heritage® Roget's Thesaurus. Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Translations

بَلادَه، بُطء الفَهْم

hloupostnudnost

kedsommelighed

Stumpfsinnigkeit

appesantissement

tompaság

heimska; deyfî; andleysi

insulsagginelentezzamonotonianoiatristezza

kasvetliliksıkıcılık

乏味单调迟钝

dullness

[ˈdʌlnɪs] N

1. (= lack of interest) [of book, lecture, person] → lo aburrido, pesadez f

2. (= lack of brightness) [of colour, metal] → falta f de brillo, lo opaco; [of landscape] → monotonía f; [of room] → lo lúgubre; [of sound, pain] → lo sordo

3. (= slow-wittedness) [of person] → torpeza f
dullness of hearing → dureza f de oído

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

dullness

[ˈdʌlnɪs] n

(= boringness) [life, routine] → monotonie f
to break the dullness of sth → briser la monotonie de qch

(= lack of sharpness) [senses, mind] → manque m de vivacitédull-witted [ˌdʌlˈwɪtɪd] adj → dur(e) à la détente

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

dullness

n

(of light) → Trübheit f; (of colours, eyes) → Mattheit f; (of hair, paintwork, metal) → Stumpfheit f; (of weather, day) → Trübheit f; (of sky) → Bedecktheit f

(= boring nature) → Langweiligkeit f

(of sound, thud) → Dumpfheit f

(= listlessness, of person) → Trägheit f; (of expression) → Lustlosigkeit f; (St Ex, Comm, of market) → Flauheit f

(= slow-wittedness) → Langsamkeit f

(form, = bluntness) → Stumpfheit f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

dullness

[ˈdʌlnɪs] n

a. (of life, evening) → tedio; (of person, uninteresting character) → l'essere noioso/a; (slow-wittedness) → ottusità; (lack of vitality) → inerzia; (of books, ideas, approach) → mancanza di originalità

b. (of colour, metal) → opacità; (of sound) → tono sordo

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

dull

(dal) adjective

1. slow to learn or to understand. The clever children help the dull ones. bot, dom بَليد، بَطيء الفَهْم бавно схващащ estúpido hloupý schwer von Begriff sløv κουτόςlento, torpe, tonto kõva peaga کند ذهن؛ خنگ hidasjärkinen borné קְשֶה-תְּפִישָׂה सुस्त, मूढ़ glup, trom lassú észjárású bodoh seinn til lento 鈍い 우둔한 bukas stulbs; truls lembap langzaamtreg i oppfatningen, tungnemtępy غړندى estúpido greoi тупой hlúpy neumen glup långsam, trög โง่ kalın kafalı 遲鈍的 тупий, нездатний کند ذہن chậm hiểu 迟钝的

2. not bright or clear. a dull day. vaal, troostelose غائِم мъглив encoberto mdlý, zasmušilý trübe mørk; grå μουντός, θαμπόςapagado sombune مبهم؛ گرفته harmaa maussadeבהיר धुंधला taman, tmuran egyhangú; tompa muram grár; myrkur, dökkur cupo どんよりした 흐린 apsiniaukęs, niūrus, rūškanas apmācies; drūms; blāvs pudar sombergrå, tung, overskyetpochmurny مبهم، نيولى encoberto mohorât пасмурный pochmúrny pust tmuran mulen มัวหมอง kapalı, sıkıcı, kasvetli, bulutlu 陰沉沉的 похмурий; безрадісний ابر آلودہ đục; mờ 阴沉的，朦胧的

3. not exciting or interesting. a very dull book. vervelig مُمِل، غَيْر مُشَوِّق скучен enfadonho nudný langweilig kedelig ανιαρόςmonótono, aburrido igav کسل کننده tylsä ennuyeux מְשַעֲמֵם निरुत्साह nezanimljiv unalmas membosankan leiðinlegur noioso つまらない 무미건조한 nuobodus neinteresants; garlaicīgs bosan saaikjedelig, tristnudny ناخونده enfadonho plictisitor скучный nudný dolgočasen dosadan [lång]tråkig, trist ไม่น่าสนใจ sıkıcı, yavan, ilginç olmayan 陰沉沉的 нудний بے مزا buồn tẻ 单调沉闷的

ˈdully adverb

vervelige كما يَنْبَغي، وِفْقا للأُصول скучно estupidamente hloupě; nudně langweilig kedeligt ανιαρά monótonamente, estúpidamente igavalt با کندی؛ بطور ملال انگیز tylsästi d'une manière ennuyeuse בְּאוֹפֶן מְשַׁעֲמֵם उचित रीति से dosadno, tromo unalmasan, tompán secara membosankan dauflega, heimskulega in modo noioso 鈍く 둔하게 nuobodžiai, bukai stulbi; truli; blāvi tidak bersemangat saaitregt, trist, monotont nudnie, tępo په غړنديتوب سره estupidamente plictisitor тупо; скучно hlúpo; nudne dolgočasno dosadno trögt, tråkigt, trist อย่างไม่มีชีวิตชีวา gerektiği gibi, hakkıyla 遲鈍地，陰沉沉地，枯燥乏味地 тупо بغیر دلچسپی کے đần độn; buồn tẻ 迟钝地，单调地，乏味地

ˈdullness noun

verveling بَلادَه، بُطء الفَهْم скука estupidez hloupost; nudnost die Stumpfsinnigkeit kedsommelighed ανία lo aburrido, insulsez igavus کندی؛ ملالت harmaus caractère ennuyeux שעמום सुस्ती, निरुत्साहता, धुंधलापन tromost, tupost tompaság, unalom kebodohan heimska; deyfð; andleysi monotonia 鈍さ 둔함 nuobodumas, bukumas stulbums; trulums; blāvums kebosanan saaitreghet, tristhetnuda, tępota غړنديتوب estupidez plictiseală тупость; скука nechápavosť topost dosada tröghet, tråkighet ความโง่; ไม่มีชีวิตชีวา sıkıcılık, kasvetlilik 遲鈍，陰沉沉，枯燥乏味 тупість; нудота بے لطفی sự đần độn; buồn tẻ 迟钝，单调，乏味

Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary © 2006-2013 K Dictionaries Ltd.

dull·ness

, dulness

1. n. matidez, resonancia disminuída en la palpación;

2. estado de aburrimiento, torpeza, estupidez;

3. [instrument's edge] melladura.

English-Spanish Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012