dull
/dʌl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.94 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Boring; not exciting or interesting.
adj
Not shiny; having a matte finish or no particular luster or brightness.
adj
Not bright or intelligent; stupid; having slow understanding.
adj
Example Sentences
- "All these knives are dull."
- "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."
- "Choose a dull finish to hide fingerprints."
- "a dull fire or lamp; a dull red or yellow; a dull mirror"
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).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /dʌl/
- British English: /dʌl/