dullness

dull  (dl)

adj. dull·er, dull·est

1. Intellectually weak or obtuse; stupid.

2. Lacking responsiveness or alertness; insensitive.

3. Dispirited; depressed.

4. Not brisk or rapid; sluggish: Business is dull.

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

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

7. Arousing no interest or curiosity; boring: a dull play.

8. Not bright or vivid. Used of a color: a dull brown.

9. Cloudy or overcast: a dull sky.

10. Not clear or resonant: a dull thud.

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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dullish adj.

dullness, dulness n.

dully 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

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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

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

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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

Translations

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

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 vivacité
dull-witted [ˌdʌlˈwɪtɪd] adj → dur(e) à la détente >

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

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