dull
Lacking the ability to cut easily; not sharp.
Adjective 4 meanings
Lacking the ability to cut easily; not sharp.
“All these knives are dull.”
Boring; not exciting or interesting.
“He sat through the dull lecture and barely stayed awake.”
Not shiny; having a matte finish or no particular luster or brightness.
“Choose a dull finish to hide fingerprints.”
Not bright or intelligent; stupid; having slow understanding.
Verb 4 meanings
To render dull; to remove or blunt an edge or something that was sharp.
“Years of misuse have dulled the tools.”
To soften, moderate or blunt; to make dull, stupid, or sluggish; to stupefy.
“He drinks to dull the pain.”
To lose a sharp edge; to become dull.
“A razor will dull with use.”
To render dim or obscure; to sully; to tarnish.
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”).
Similar and opposite words
DULL at a glance
DULL has 4 letters and scores 5 points in Scrabble (D 2 + U 1 + L 1 + L 1) and 8 in Words With Friends, before board bonuses. It ranks #7,669 by how often it appears in everyday English. It is valid in ENABLE, NWL2023, Collins/SOWPODS.
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