What's the difference between bland and dowdy?

Bland


Definition:

  • (a.) Mild; soft; gentle; smooth and soothing in manner; suave; as, a bland temper; bland persuasion; a bland sycophant.
  • (a.) Having soft and soothing qualities; not drastic or irritating; not stimulating; as, a bland oil; a bland diet.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For further education, this would be my priority: a substantial increase in funding and an end to tinkering with the form of qualifications and bland repetition of the “parity of esteem” trope.
  • (2) Reoperation was more frequent after valve replacement with bioprostheses (6.7% per patient year) than after valvuloplasty (4.3% per patient year) and after mechanical valve replacement (1.5% per patient year; P less than 0.02), and was necessitated mainly by residual or recurrent valve dysfunction after valvuloplasty, bland or infected periprosthetic leaks in mechanical valves and degradation of bioprostheses.
  • (3) "Everyone calls him the Socialist Worker Padre," one bland senior cleric told me with a sly and dismissive laugh.
  • (4) ABNORMALITIES OF THE CERVICAL EPITHELIUM ARE SET OUT IN TWO MAIN GROUPS: bland lesions which are regarded as unrelated to malignancy, and malign lesions which are considered as potential precursors of invasive carcinoma.
  • (5) Embolization with avitene, PVA and ethanol induced a more bland histological reaction than the one observed with IBCA.
  • (6) Sir Christopher Bland, the former BBC chairman, told the BBC News channel the allegations were "very serious" but warned against jumping to conclusions about Rippon stepping aside.
  • (7) Among pro-independence people there are widespread concerns that if the SNP moves too quickly on a referendum it will cast the choice in the often bland New Labour-ish terms it uses for everyday politics – and thus deprive Scotland of a crucial opportunity to discuss its future, as well as threatening their chances of winning.
  • (8) But blandness in public should not be mistaken for blandness of character, and there are signs that she is beginning to emerge from the passive role she has been playing.
  • (9) Most examples measure less than or equal to 0.5 cm and are composed of a partially encapsulated mass of bland Schwann cells and innumerable tiny axons arranged in interlacing fascicles.
  • (10) His neutralisation strategy has amounted to little more than bland statements of support and efforts to keep the NHS out of the news.
  • (11) He is a regular panellist on comedy news quizzes, and reaches for Wodehouse in depicting 70s foreign secretary Lord Home "playing Lord Emsworth to Heath's Empress of Blandings".
  • (12) Pathologic examination of the orbital breast metastases revealed two types: an adenocarcinomatous pattern with nests of pleomorphic malignant appearing cells and a histiocytoid variant with bland, large cells similar to histiocytes.
  • (13) Unfortunately, the commercials are so bland and empty that they’re almost certainly doomed to failure.
  • (14) Much of the time he sounds bland, monotonal, bobbing gently along.
  • (15) The frequency of major events during follow-up (thromboembolism, anticoagulant related hemorrhage, bland perivalvular leak and prosthetic valve endocarditis) were similar, but the frequency of primary tissue valve failure was markedly different for the two valves (1.1% per patient-year for Ionescu-Shiley valves and 5.9% for the Hancock valve).
  • (16) A bland vasculopathic process resulting from metabolic or immunologic disturbances appears to be the best explanation for this new syndrome, which has previously been recognized only in Japan.
  • (17) The anomalous origin of the left coronary artery from the pulmonary artery (Bland-White-Garland Syndrome) is a rare congenital malformation reported to occur in 0.25-0.5% of all congenital cardiac anomalies.
  • (18) He recommends not a bland and stimulus-free environment, but one whose elements are unobtrusive and unambiguous.
  • (19) David Bell will be online this afternoon at 4.15pm to answer your points at www.EducationGuardian.co.uk Changing faces of Ofsted Stewart Sutherland 1992-1994 Sutherland was criticised for a slow start and bland inspections.
  • (20) Two deceptively benign-appearing, unclassifiable but very similar fibromyxoid sarcomas characterized histologically by bland, innocuous-appearing fibroblastic cells and a swirling, whorled growth pattern are presented.

Dowdy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Showing a vulgar taste in dress; awkward and slovenly in dress; vulgar-looking.
  • (n.) An awkward, vulgarly dressed, inelegant woman.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This mixture (also called Innovar) is rapid in action and results in complete suppression of vestibular activity of both normal subjects and those with Ménière's disease as described by Dowdy, et al., in a preliminary report.
  • (2) Its flagship store on Regent Street had the air of a venerable institution - dowdy, British, heedless of what was going on outside its own doors.
  • (3) Now, a two-year refurbishment has transformed a dowdy labyrinth with state-of-the-art lighting, subtle wall colouring and a clever choice of paintings.
  • (4) When I was a boy London was a dowdy place of tea-houses and stale rock cakes where everybody spoke English.
  • (5) New branches of the Women’s Institute , hitherto firmly associated in the national imagination with the dowdy, jam-making elders of rural communities, began to be founded by thirtysomethings in fashionable urban neighbourhoods.
  • (6) But it’s not easy to juggle style and substance in politics, as Martinez discovered when he looked to Capitol Hill for wardrobe inspiration and came up short, discovering that a deliberate dowdiness pervades real-life DC wardrobes .
  • (7) Though the elderly Victoria came to symbolise a dowdy puritanism, the early years of her reign were marked by scandal and assassination attempts.
  • (8) It’s a once-glorious, now-dowdy thoroughfare with a few refulgent granite buildings surrounded by an excess of eyesores.
  • (9) She's said in the past that she did it to avoid being typecast after a succession of dowdy roles, which makes some kind of sense.
  • (10) I hated it,” wrote Katharine Graham , whose family owned the paper for 80 years , deriding it as “plain, dowdy and full of compromises”.
  • (11) The two-year refurbishment has transformed a dowdy labyrinth with state-of-the-art lighting and a clever choice of paintings.
  • (12) Martinez admitted it was a challenge: “The clothes were semi-fitted, not supposed to be sexy, just tailored – but Julia is naturally sexy, so it sometimes came off that way.” Essentially, Hollywood’s version of "dowdy" isn’t dowdy at all, but we applaud Martinez’s efforts.
  • (13) In a newly released Old Spice commercial , a collection of pathetic, dowdy, genderless "momcreatures" stalk their sons on dates and other encounters with young women.
  • (14) Google of course has considerably more resources than dowdy data protection offices and, as the court recognised, a significant influence on the lives of many individuals.
  • (15) But theimage of electric vehicles as dowdy "Noddy" cars has begun to change, due to luxury electric sports cars such as California's Tesla Roadster and the British-designed Lightning GT.
  • (16) When the Beveridge Report, which laid the foundations for the welfare state, was published in 1942, it sold a third of a million copies, dowdy official report though it might have been.