dull
Part of speech: adj
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English dull, dul (also dyll, dill, dwal), from Old English dol (“dull, foolish, erring, heretical; foolish, silly; presumptuous”), from Proto-West Germanic *dol, from Proto-Germanic *dulaz, from earlier *dwulaz, 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”), West-Flemish dul (angry, furious).
Inflected forms:
form: duller
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: dullest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: dul
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: dulle
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: dulls
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: dulling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: dulled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: dulled
pos: verb
tags: past
form: dul
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: dulle
pos: verb
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Lacking the ability to cut easily; not sharp.
pos: adj
examples: All these knives are dull.
gloss: Boring; not exciting or interesting.
pos: adj
examples: He sat through the dull lecture and barely stayed awake.
"You are very dull this morning, Sheriff," said the youngest daughter of the house, who, being the baby and pretty, had grown pettishly privileged in speech.
But there we were given only the dullest, driest, pemmicanised forms like The Student's Hume, Once I had a hundred pages of The Student's Hume as a holiday task.
gloss: Not shiny; having a matte finish or no particular luster or brightness.
pos: adj
examples: Choose a dull finish to hide fingerprints.
a dull fire or lamp;  a dull red or yellow;  a dull mirror
A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire.
The young bird had the plumage of the saddleback, not the even chestnut of the jackbird, although its plumage was rather duller than that of the adult.
gloss: Not bright or intelligent; stupid; having slow understanding.
pos: adj
examples: She is not bred so dull but she can learn.
dull at classical learning
She paused and took a defiant breath. ‘If you don't believe me, I can't help it. But I'm not a liar.’ ¶ ‘No,’ said Luke, grinning at her. ‘You're not dull enough! […] What about the kid's clothes? I don't suppose they were anything to write home about, but didn't you keep anything? A bootee or a bit of embroidery or anything at all?’
gloss: Sluggish, listless.
pos: adj
examples: This people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing.
O, help my weak wit and sharpen my dull tongue.
[…] St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London. Close-packed, crushed by the buttressed height of the railway viaduct, rendered airless by huge walls of factories, it at once banished lively interest from a stranger's mind and left only a dull oppression of the spirit.
gloss: Bored, depressed, down.
pos: adj
examples: I felt dull all day.
gloss: Cloudy, overcast.
pos: adj
examples: It's a dull day.
gloss: Insensible; unfeeling.
pos: adj
examples: Think me not / So dull a devil to forget the loss / Of such a matchless wife.
gloss: Heavy; lifeless; inert.
pos: adj
examples: the dull earth
c. 1857', Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Table-Talk
As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so changes of study a dull brain.
gloss: Not intense; felt indistinctly or only slightly.
pos: adj
examples: Pressing on the bruise produces a dull pain.
gloss: Not clear, muffled. (of a noise or sound)
pos: adj
gloss: To render dull; to remove or blunt an edge or something that was sharp.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Years of misuse have dulled the tools.
This […] dulled their swords.
gloss: To soften, moderate or blunt; to make dull, stupid, or sluggish; to stupefy.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: He drinks to dull the pain.
Those [drugs] she has / Will stupefy and dull the sense a while.
Use and custom have so dulled our eyes.
gloss: To lose a sharp edge; to become dull.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: A razor will dull with use.
gloss: To render dim or obscure; to sully; to tarnish.
pos: verb
Synonyms: dullen
Related words: bedole
Dollard
Derived words: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
dullard
dull as dishwater
dull as ditchwater
dullen
dullery
dull fish
dullhead
dull-headed
dullish
dull-minded
dullness
dullsome
dullsville
dullwit
dull-witted
dully
fordull
never a dull moment
semidull
too much bed makes a dull head
undull
undullable
undulled
Translations: