What's the difference between clear and dull?

Clear


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To make exchanges of checks and bills, and settle balances, as is done in a clearing house.
  • (v. i.) To obtain a clearance; as, the steamer cleared for Liverpool to-day.
  • (superl.) Free from opaqueness; transparent; bright; light; luminous; unclouded.
  • (superl.) Free from ambiguity or indistinctness; lucid; perspicuous; plain; evident; manifest; indubitable.
  • (superl.) Able to perceive clearly; keen; acute; penetrating; discriminating; as, a clear intellect; a clear head.
  • (superl.) Not clouded with passion; serene; cheerful.
  • (superl.) Easily or distinctly heard; audible; canorous.
  • (superl.) Without mixture; entirely pure; as, clear sand.
  • (superl.) Without defect or blemish, such as freckles or knots; as, a clear complexion; clear lumber.
  • (superl.) Free from guilt or stain; unblemished.
  • (superl.) Without diminution; in full; net; as, clear profit.
  • (superl.) Free from impediment or obstruction; unobstructed; as, a clear view; to keep clear of debt.
  • (superl.) Free from embarrassment; detention, etc.
  • (n.) Full extent; distance between extreme limits; especially; the distance between the nearest surfaces of two bodies, or the space between walls; as, a room ten feet square in the clear.
  • (adv.) In a clear manner; plainly.
  • (adv.) Without limitation; wholly; quite; entirely; as, to cut a piece clear off.
  • (v. t.) To render bright, transparent, or undimmed; to free from clouds.
  • (v. t.) To free from impurities; to clarify; to cleanse.
  • (v. t.) To free from obscurity or ambiguity; to relive of perplexity; to make perspicuous.
  • (v. t.) To render more quick or acute, as the understanding; to make perspicacious.
  • (v. t.) To free from impediment or incumbrance, from defilement, or from anything injurious, useless, or offensive; as, to clear land of trees or brushwood, or from stones; to clear the sight or the voice; to clear one's self from debt; -- often used with of, off, away, or out.
  • (v. t.) To free from the imputation of guilt; to justify, vindicate, or acquit; -- often used with from before the thing imputed.
  • (v. t.) To leap or pass by, or over, without touching or failure; as, to clear a hedge; to clear a reef.
  • (v. t.) To gain without deduction; to net.
  • (v. i.) To become free from clouds or fog; to become fair; -- often followed by up, off, or away.
  • (v. i.) To disengage one's self from incumbrances, distress, or entanglements; to become free.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Lucy and Ed will combine coverage of hard and breaking news with a commitment to investigative journalism, which their track record so clearly demonstrates”.
  • (2) These immunocytochemical studies clearly demonstrated that cells encountered within the fibrous intimal thickening in the vein graft were inevitably smooth muscle cell in origin.
  • (3) Intravesical BCG is clearly superior to oral BCG, and controlled studies have demonstrated that percutaneous administration is not necessary.
  • (4) I want to be clear; the American forces that have been deployed to Iraq do not and will not have a combat mission,” said Obama in a speech to troops at US Central Command headquarters in Florida.
  • (5) Although solely nociresponsive neurons are clearly likely to fill a role in the processing and signalling of pain in the conscious central nervous system, the way in which such useful specificity could be conveyed by multireceptive neurons is difficult to appreciate.
  • (6) The findings clearly reveal that only the Sertoli-Sertoli junctional site forms a restrictive barrier.
  • (7) Although antihistamines are widely used for symptomatic treatment of seasonal (allergic) rhinitis, the role of histamines in the pathogenesis of infectious rhinitis is not clear.
  • (8) The present results provide no evidence for a clear morphological substrate for electrotonic transmission in the somatic efferent portion of the primate oculomotor nucleus.
  • (9) But the sports minister has been clear that too many sports bodies are currently not delivering in bringing new people from all backgrounds to their sport.
  • (10) Spermine clearly activated 45Ca uptake by coupled mitochondria, but had no effect on Ca2+ egress from mitochondria previously loaded with 45Ca.
  • (11) Anaerobes, in particular Bacteroides spp., are the predominant bacteria present in mixed intra-abdominal infections, yet their critical importance in the pathogenicity of these infections is not clearly defined.
  • (12) In the German Democratic Republic, patients with scleroderma and history of long term silica exposure are recognized as patients with occupational disease even though pneumoconiosis is not clearly demonstrated on X-ray film.
  • (13) But it will be a subtle difference, because it's already abundantly clear there's no danger of the war being suddenly forgotten, or made to seem irrelevant to our sense of what Europe and the world has to avoid repeating.
  • (14) However in the deciduous teeth from which the successional tooth germs were removed, the processes of tooth resorption was very different in individuals, the difference between tooth resorption in normal occlusal force and in decreased occlusal force was not clear.
  • (15) The trophozoites and pseudocysts could be clearly demonstrated by immunohistochemistry.
  • (16) There is precedent in Islamic law for saving the life of the mother where there is a clear choice of allowing either the fetus or the mother to survive.
  • (17) The results clearly show that the acute hyperthermia of unrestrained rats induced by either peripheral or central injections of morphine is not caused by activation of the pituitary-adrenal axis.
  • (18) A full-scale war is unlikely but there is clear concern in Seoul about the more realistic threat of a small-scale attack on the South Korean military or a group of islands near the countries' disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea.
  • (19) The pathogenicity of Mycoplasma pneumoniae in atypical pneumonias can be considered confirmed according to the availabile literature; its importance for other inflammatory diseases of the respiratory tract, particularly for chronic bronchitis, is not yet sufficiently clear.
  • (20) It is especially efficacious in evaluating patients with cystic lesions, especially those with complex cysts not clearly of water density.

Dull


Definition:

  • (superl.) Slow of understanding; wanting readiness of apprehension; stupid; doltish; blockish.
  • (superl.) Slow in action; sluggish; unready; awkward.
  • (superl.) Insensible; unfeeling.
  • (superl.) Not keen in edge or point; lacking sharpness; blunt.
  • (superl.) Not bright or clear to the eye; wanting in liveliness of color or luster; not vivid; obscure; dim; as, a dull fire or lamp; a dull red or yellow; a dull mirror.
  • (superl.) Heavy; gross; cloggy; insensible; spiritless; lifeless; inert.
  • (superl.) Furnishing little delight, spirit, or variety; uninteresting; tedious; cheerless; gloomy; melancholy; depressing; as, a dull story or sermon; a dull occupation or period; hence, cloudy; overcast; as, a dull day.
  • (v. t.) To deprive of sharpness of edge or point.
  • (v. t.) To make dull, stupid, or sluggish; to stupefy, as the senses, the feelings, the perceptions, and the like.
  • (v. t.) To render dim or obscure; to sully; to tarnish.
  • (v. t.) To deprive of liveliness or activity; to render heavy; to make inert; to depress; to weary; to sadden.
  • (v. i.) To become dull or stupid.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain," Wallace wrote at one point, "because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from."
  • (2) Similar systems were put in place at Dulles outside Washington DC, Newark and Chicago airports on Thursday.
  • (3) The soft, dull, malacic appearance of the center results from lack of a true surface layer of tangential collagen fibers.
  • (4) Here I am in Los Angeles being paid $30,000 to do next to nothing and still I'm finding life rather dull.
  • (5) A significant proportion of splenic B cells reacted with these mAb, although lower number (one-log less) than peritoneal B cells and a small proportion of H7dull+ splenic B cells seems to be Ly-1(CD5)dull+, 1 of 200 splenic B cells responded to IL-5 for IgM production.
  • (6) A 58-year-old man complained of dull left lower quadrant pain and constipation.
  • (7) They will begin next week at Liberty airport in Newark, New Jersey; Dulles, outside Washington DC; Chicago O’Hare, and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.
  • (8) At both observations, crowns were rated on 5-point Likert scales for outline form, porosity, smoothness, reflectance, texture, dullness, defects, and general esthetic appearances.
  • (9) On the other hand AMH2 showed the dull-positive reaction with some monocytes and pleural exudate cells among above-mentioned cells.
  • (10) Britain’s Got Talent review – Simon Cowell is looking like Caligula after a dull day at the Coliseum Read more The show, won last year by boy band Collabro, began eight years ago with 4.9 million viewers, rising to 8.8 million for its second series launch before hitting the 10 million mark for the first time in 2009 with 10.3 million.
  • (11) Disseminated annular psoriasiform lesions developed over a period of 2 months in a 48-year-old man with no preceding psoriatic history of drug intake, being accompanied by general dullness and arthralgia.
  • (12) 3) At the severe stage, pain and dullness at the back, numbness at arms and hands, hand coldness, sleep disturbance etc.
  • (13) One month after surgery, she complained of swelling and a dull pain in the right leg without cardiorespiratory symptoms.
  • (14) Black-hair follicular dysplasia in dogs of mixed breeding was delineated by hypotrichosis and dullness of most black regions of the coat.
  • (15) Endoscopic examination disclosed an almost roundish, smooth-surfaced, flat and dull red area corresponding to IIc (slightly depressed type).
  • (16) Their surface phenotype was Thy-1+(dull), Ly-1.2+(dull), Lyt-2-, L3T4-, 9F3+, and 3A1+, which is consistent with that found in intact lpr mice.
  • (17) The engines, gearboxes and even the doors now have a complexity that sees them constructed elsewhere, but the transformation on this line of the dull sheen of aluminium parts into a moving vehicle at the other end is still something to behold.
  • (18) Flow cytometry showed three types of trophozoite staining by mAb: (i) bright staining of greater than 90% of trophozoites, with aggregation of the organisms; (ii) bright staining of approximately 90% of trophozoites, with little or no aggregation; (iii) dull staining of approximately 20% of trophozoites, without aggregation.
  • (19) The percentage of dull CD8+CD11b+ cells (natural killer cells) among TG-2 cells was lower than that in peripheral blood, but there was no significant difference in bright CD8+CD11b+ cells (suppressor-effector T cells) between thyroid glands and peripheral blood.
  • (20) It was filed in my mind as a pretty but dull destination, full of pensioners on package deals and cruises.