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dull

Pronunciation: /dʌl/

The English word “dull” has 17 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Lacking the ability to cut easily; not sharp.
  2. Boring; not exciting or interesting.
  3. Not shiny; having a matte finish or no particular luster or brightness.
  4. Not bright or intelligent; stupid; having slow understanding.
  5. Sluggish, listless.
  6. Bored, depressed, down.
  7. Cloudy, overcast.
  8. Insensible; unfeeling.
  9. Heavy; lifeless; inert.
  10. Not intense; felt indistinctly or only slightly.
  11. Not clear, muffled. (of a noise or sound)

verb

  1. To render dull; to remove or blunt an edge or something that was sharp.
  2. To soften, moderate or blunt; to make dull, stupid, or sluggish; to stupefy.
  3. To lose a sharp edge; to become dull.
  4. To render dim or obscure; to sully; to tarnish.
  5. To fish (or snare an animal, especially a fish) with such a noose.

noun

  1. A noose of string, metal wire, or hair used to snare an animal, especially a fish.

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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.