Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Intellectually weak or obtuse; stupid.
- adj. Lacking responsiveness or alertness; insensitive.
- adj. Dispirited; depressed.
- adj. Not brisk or rapid; sluggish: Business is dull.
- adj. Not having a sharp edge or point; blunt: a dull knife.
- adj. Not intensely or keenly felt: a dull ache.
- adj. Arousing no interest or curiosity; boring: a dull play.
- adj. Not bright or vivid. Used of a color: a dull brown.
- adj. Cloudy or overcast: a dull sky.
- adj. Not clear or resonant: a dull thud.
- v. To make or become dull.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Stupid; foolish; doltish; blockish; slow of understanding: as, a lad of dull intellect.
- Heavy; sluggish; drowsy; inanimate; slow in thought, expression, or action: as, a surfeit leaves one dull; a dull thinker; a dull sermon; a dull stream; trade is dull.
- Wanting sensibility or keenness; not quick in perception: as, dull of hearing; dull of seeing.
- Sad; melancholy; depressed; dismal.
- Not pleasing or enlivening; not exhilarating; causing dullness or ennui; depressing; cheerless: as, dull weather; a dull prospect.
- Gross; inanimate; insensible.
- Not bright or clear; not vivid; dim; obscure: as, a dull fire or light; a dull red color; the mirror gives a dull reflection.
- Not sharp or acute; obtuse; blunt: as, a dull sword; a dull needle.
- Not keenly felt; not intense: as, a dull pain. Synonyms Silly, etc. See
simple . - To make dull, stupid, heavy, insensible, etc.; lessen the vigor, activity, or sensitiveness of; render inanimate; damp: as, to dull the wits; to dull the senses.
- To render dim; sully; tarnish or cloud: as, the breath dulls a mirror.
- To make less sharp or acute; render blunt or obtuse: as, to dull a knife or a needle.
- To make less keenly felt; moderate the intensity of: as, to dull pain.
- To become dull or blunt; become stupid.
- To become calm; moderate: as, the wind dulled, or dulled down, about twelve o'clock.
- To become deadened in color; lose brightness.
- n. A noose of string or wire used to snare fish; usually, a noose of bright copper wire attached by a short string to a stout pole.
- To fish with a dull: as, to dull for trout.
Wiktionary
- adj. Lacking the ability to cut easily; not sharp.
- adj. Boring; not exciting or interesting.
- adj. Not shiny; having a matte finish or no particular luster.
- adj. Not bright or intelligent; stupid; slow of understanding.
- v. transitive To render dull; to remove or blunt an edge or something that was sharp.
- v. transitive To soften, moderate or blunt.
- v. intransitive To lose a sharp edge; to become dull.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Slow of understanding; wanting readiness of apprehension; stupid; doltish; blockish.
- adj. Slow in action; sluggish; unready; awkward.
- adj. Insensible; unfeeling.
- adj. Not keen in edge or point; lacking sharpness; blunt.
- adj. Not bright or clear to the eye; wanting in liveliness of color or luster; not vivid; obscure; dim.
- adj. Heavy; gross; cloggy; insensible; spiritless; lifeless; inert.
- adj. Furnishing little delight, spirit, or variety; uninteresting; tedious; cheerless; gloomy; melancholy; depressing; ; hence, cloudy; overcast.
- v. To deprive of sharpness of edge or point.
- v. To make dull, stupid, or sluggish; to stupefy, as the senses, the feelings, the perceptions, and the like.
- v. To render dim or obscure; to sully; to tarnish.
- v. To deprive of liveliness or activity; to render heavy; to make inert; to depress; to weary; to sadden.
- v. To become dull or stupid.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. being or made softer or less loud or clear
- adj. slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity
- v. become dull or lusterless in appearance; lose shine or brightness
- v. become less interesting or attractive
- adj. not clear and resonant; sounding as if striking with or against something relatively soft
- v. make dull or blunt
- adj. (of color) very low in saturation; highly diluted
- adj. so lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness
- adj. not keenly felt
- v. make dull in appearance
- adj. (of business) not active or brisk
- adj. darkened with overcast
- v. deaden (a sound or noise), especially by wrapping
- adj. blunted in responsiveness or sensibility
- adj. emitting or reflecting very little light
- adj. lacking in liveliness or animation
- adj. not having a sharp edge or point
- v. make numb or insensitive
- v. make less lively or vigorous
Etymologies
- From Middle English dull, dul (also dyll, dill, dwal), from Old English dol ("dull, foolish, erring, heretical; foolish, silly; presumptuous"), from Proto-Germanic *dulaz, a variant of *dwalaz (“stunned, mad, foolish, misled”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰwel-, *dʰewel- (“to dim, dull, cloud, make obscure, swirl, whirl”). Cognate with Scots dull, doll ("slow to understand or hear, deaf, dull"), North Frisian dol ("rash, unthinking, giddy, flippant"), Dutch dol ("crazy, mad, insane"), Low German dul, dol ("mad, silly, stupid, fatuous"), German toll ("crazy, mad, wild, fantastic"), Danish dval ("foolish, absurd"), Icelandic dulur ("secretive, silent"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English dul; akin to Old English dol. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It has been called "the dull product of a scoffer's pen"; it is indeed the "product of a scoffer's pen"; but after reading the Excursion, few people will think it _dull_.”
Lectures on the English Poets Delivered at the Surrey Institution
“It is so what you call dull, Sir John," she protested in her coquettish way.”
“I don't know what you call dull," replied the old man, as if half offended at the suggestion.”
“Noah says brilliant it puts alot of fun in dull things”
X – tape, Hinge Print Tape by Hyoungmin Park & Jeongmin Lee for mmiinn » Yanko Design
“October 13, 2009 at 12: 51 am. .and OMG how boring and dull is Lucie?!”
“Inventor Thomas Edison, who gave us the light bulb and other inventions 1,093 patents that ushered in the 20th century, was called dull by a grade school teacher who believed that Edison had no ability to learn.”
The Huffington Post: Bernard Starr: Should Obama Show His School Transcripts?
“The classic nonsensical one -- with terrible one bedrooms in dull blocks like up past 8th Avenue, a block or two past the bus station -- going for $900,000 is permanently dead in relative terms.”
Could Adapting Office Buildings to Residential Work in Seattle? « PubliCola
“That which lies behind is but the crude world's shadow in dull light;”
“RUIBAL: Radio silence successful in dull sprint-finish stage”
“He lay in dull despair, while she watched him searchingly, pondering again upon unsummoned and wayward thoughts of marriage.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dull’.
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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CULI - wine-tasting adjectives
In this area of expertise nouns are frequently used as adjectives (almond, bacon, cider, diesel, fennel, fresh-cut hay, wool) or new adjectives are formed (appley, berrylike, citrusy, full-bodied, ...
acetic, acidic, aged, angular, appley, astringent, attractive, austere, berrylike, big, bitter, brawny and 511 more...
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Minerals and Mineralogy
List of minerals, elements, group names and geochemistry terms encountered in the science of mineralogy. I've chosen to avoid capital letters in most examples, though a great many mineral names hon...
galkhaite, xanthoconite, pyrostilpnite, polybasite, pyrargyrite, djurleite, digenite, covellite, chalcocite, cerargirite, acanthite, aeschynite and 2608 more...
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EN - pronunciation fun
All words of the poem
The Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse <...abyss, ache, actual, advice, aerie, age, ague, aisles, alas, alien, alive, allowed and 406 more...
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INTERP - speeches can be...
adequate, adroit, blunt, blurred, committed, divisive, exacerbating, fitting, hollow, lengthy, murky, pronounced and 123 more...
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Adjectives
sagacious, average, angry, mad, crazy, giant, ugly, pretty, happy, sad, lonely, solitary and 119 more...
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Metallics
Words that relate to or describe metals.
malleable, ductile, shiny, steely, brassy, dull, golden, precious, smelt, smith, tensile, clink and 39 more...
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Words descriptive of the colour of th...
sloe, hyaline, dull, turquoise, slate, snotgreen, ultramarine, glaucous, murky, ashen, wine-dark, claret and 32 more...
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Words from books I've read
These are some words I didn't know when I read and now I want to know!
mortgage, fiddling, rage, kick, stroke, dodge, hunch, scratch, covetous, rank, trickle, budget and 179 more...
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amagnano's Words
truculent, churlish, antipathy, sociopathy, loquacious, disheveled, pouilly-fuisse, enamored, marked, assuage, ascetic, pagan and 190 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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to acquire
moustache, thoughtcrime, lift, overall, razor, strength, oily, gin, oily gin, brotherhood, dull, toward and 108 more...
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Apples to Apples: Green Cards
A complete list of the green cards (adjectives) from the popular word game.
absurd, addictive, adorable, aged, American, ancient, animated, annoying, appetizing, arrogant, awesome, awkward and 237 more...
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feeling words
twitterpated, loquacious, ambiguous, pensive, sluggish, anxious, adventurous, curious, abandoned, absent-minded, abrasive, abused and 653 more...
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GMAT
part of speech, frown, brow, immensely, immense, incomprehensible, toil, concision, concise, proper noun, hyphenated, dash and 190 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for dull.

hernesheir "A young Woman her name was Dull."
John Bunyan (1628-1688), Pilgrim's Progress Sep 19, 2009
frogapplause
John McGrath's eyes are fine... he really is a dull boy. Sep 7, 2009