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Dull   /dəl/   Listen
adjective
Dull  adj.  (compar. duller; superl. dullest)  
1.
Slow of understanding; wanting readiness of apprehension; stupid; doltish; blockish. "Dull at classical learning." "She is not bred so dull but she can learn."
2.
Slow in action; sluggish; unready; awkward. "This people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing." "O, help my weak wit and sharpen my dull tongue."
3.
Insensible; unfeeling. "Think me not So dull a devil to forget the loss Of such a matchless wife."
4.
Not keen in edge or point; lacking sharpness; blunt. "Thy scythe is dull."
5.
Not bright or clear to the eye; wanting in liveliness of color or luster; not vivid; obscure; dim; as, a dull fire or lamp; a dull red or yellow; a dull mirror.
6.
Heavy; gross; cloggy; insensible; spiritless; lifeless; inert. "The dull earth." "As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so changes of study a dull brain."
7.
Furnishing little delight, spirit, or variety; uninteresting; tedious; cheerless; gloomy; melancholy; depressing; as, a dull story or sermon; a dull occupation or period; hence, cloudy; overcast; as, a dull day. "Along life's dullest, dreariest walk."
Synonyms: Lifeless; inanimate; dead; stupid; doltish; heavy; sluggish; sleepy; drowsy; gross; cheerless; tedious; irksome; dismal; dreary; clouded; tarnished; obtuse. See Lifeless.


verb
Dull  v. t.  (past & past part. duller; pres. part. dulling)  
1.
To deprive of sharpness of edge or point. "This... dulled their swords." "Borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."
2.
To make dull, stupid, or sluggish; to stupefy, as the senses, the feelings, the perceptions, and the like. "Those (drugs) she has Will stupefy and dull the sense a while." "Use and custom have so dulled our eyes."
3.
To render dim or obscure; to sully; to tarnish. "Dulls the mirror."
4.
To deprive of liveliness or activity; to render heavy; to make inert; to depress; to weary; to sadden. "Attention of mind... wasted or dulled through continuance."


Dull  v. i.  To become dull or stupid.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books



... Penang. The pipe "up anchor" this morning was hailed with delight. Anything to change the dull monotony of the last few weeks. We started with an overcast and rainy sky, and by the next morning had reached Malacca, a small British settlement, essentially Malay, more a village than a town. It lies very low and close to the water's edge, the houses of the natives being ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... man to love a woman as I do,' he went on—'I did not seek to love her, it came upon me before I was aware—before I had ever thought about it at all, I loved her better than all the world beside. All my life, before I knew her, seems a dull blank. I neither know nor care for what I did before then. And now there are just two lives before me. Either I have her, or I have not. That is all: but that is everything. And what can I do to make her have me? ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... my wild endeavour To leave the dull unmoving strand, To hail thee, Sea; to leave thee never, And o'er thy foam to guide for ever My ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the scoop, and looked at it as if he had never seen such a thing before; he moved about heavily, hardly knowing what he did, but conscious all the while of his own great misery. His limbs seemed half frozen, and a dull pain gathered about his head and in his breast—in fact, everywhere ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to-night in the pretty detached cottages he passed, and he thought with growing wrath of the trivial errand on which he had been sent. "In happy homes he saw the light," but none of the high purpose of the youth of "Excelsior" fame stirred his heart—rather a dull sense of failure from all high things. What did his life amount to anyway, that he should count one thing more trivial than another? He loved his wife and children dearly, but he remembered a time when his ambition had not thought of being satisfied with the daily grind for a living and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various


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