dull – English adjective declension

Adjective: dull

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Comparative	duller
Superlative	dullest

Perifrastic

Sample 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. [1895, S. R. Crockett, A Cry Across the Black Water:]
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. [2012, Winston S. Churchill, Martin Gilbert, Churchill: The Power of Words, page 14:]
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. [1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0016:]
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. [1959, Robert Adams Wilson, Bird Islands of New Zealand, page 67:]
She is not bred so dull but she can learn. [c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:]
dull at classical learning [1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 5, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:]
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?’ [1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 15, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:]
This people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 13:xiii:]
O, help my weak wit and sharpen my dull tongue. [1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:]
[…] 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. [1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:]
I felt dull all day.
It's a dull day.
Think me not / So dull a devil to forget the loss / Of such a matchless wife. [1616–1619 (first performance), John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Nathan Field, “The Knight of Malta”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act V, scene ii:]
the dull earth [c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:]
c. 1857', Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Table-Talk
As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so changes of study a dull brain.
Pressing on the bruise produces a dull pain.

Adjectives inflected like dull

sallow, smooth, slight, sleigh, sordid, somber, shweet, shrill, shrewd, yellow, yaller, hard knock, DRY, Greek, cut short, unquiet, unclean, indiscreet, chipper, straicht, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)

Etymology

1. 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”).
2. 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). See: Dutch Adjectives 'dol', German Adjectives 'toll'.