What's the difference between common and drab?

Common


Definition:

  • (v.) Belonging or relating equally, or similarly, to more than one; as, you and I have a common interest in the property.
  • (v.) Belonging to or shared by, affecting or serving, all the members of a class, considered together; general; public; as, properties common to all plants; the common schools; the Book of Common Prayer.
  • (v.) Often met with; usual; frequent; customary.
  • (v.) Not distinguished or exceptional; inconspicuous; ordinary; plebeian; -- often in a depreciatory sense.
  • (v.) Profane; polluted.
  • (v.) Given to habits of lewdness; prostitute.
  • (n.) The people; the community.
  • (n.) An inclosed or uninclosed tract of ground for pleasure, for pasturage, etc., the use of which belongs to the public; or to a number of persons.
  • (n.) The right of taking a profit in the land of another, in common either with the owner or with other persons; -- so called from the community of interest which arises between the claimant of the right and the owner of the soil, or between the claimants and other commoners entitled to the same right.
  • (v. i.) To converse together; to discourse; to confer.
  • (v. i.) To participate.
  • (v. i.) To have a joint right with others in common ground.
  • (v. i.) To board together; to eat at a table in common.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) One hundred and twenty-seven states have said with common voice that their security is directly threatened by the 15,000 nuclear weapons that exist in the arsenals of nine countries, and they are demanding that these weapons be prohibited and abolished.
  • (2) The patterns observed were: clusters of granules related to the cell membrane; positive staining localized to portions of the cell membrane, and, less commonly, the whole cell circumference.
  • (3) Melanoma is the second most common cancer, after testicular cancer, in males in the U.S. Navy.
  • (4) Some common eye movement deficits, and concepts such as 'the neural integrator' and the 'velocity storage mechanism', for which anatomical substrates are still sought, are introduced.
  • (5) Low birth weight, short stature, and mental retardation were common features in the four known patients with r(8).
  • (6) In a debate in the House of Commons, I will ask Britain, the US and other allies to convert generalised offers of help into more practical support with greater air cover, military surveillance and helicopter back-up, to hunt down the terrorists who abducted the girls.
  • (7) The common polyamines, spermidine and spermine, and histones were not substrates.
  • (8) Peripheral vascular surgery has become an increasingly common mode of treatment in non-university, community hospitals in Sweden during the last decade.
  • (9) The populations of Asia-Oceania have some features of the class II RFLPs in common, which are distinctly different from Caucasoids.
  • (10) The observed relationship between prorenin and renin substrate concentrations might be a consequence of their regulation by common factors.
  • (11) Patient or fetal cord serum is commonly used as a protein supplement to culture media used in in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
  • (12) We conclude that chloramphenicol resistance encoded by Tn1696 is due to a permeability barrier and hypothesize that the gene from P. aeruginosa may share a common ancestral origin with these genes from other gram-negative organisms.
  • (13) Community owned and run local businesses are becoming increasingly common.
  • (14) Historical analysis shows that institutions and special education services spring from common, although not identical, societal and philosophical forces.
  • (15) Topical and systemic antibiotic therapy is common in dermatology, yet it is hard to find a rationale for a particular route in some diseases.
  • (16) Herbalists in Baja California Norte, Mexico, were interviewed to determine the ailments and diseases most frequently treated with 22 commonly used medicinal plants.
  • (17) Obesity in the Pimas is familial and has complex relationships with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, a common disease in this population.
  • (18) A simple method of selective catheterization of the superficial femoral artery (SFA) following antegrade puncture of the common femoral artery is described.
  • (19) The main clinical symptom was pain, usually sciatica, while neurological symptoms were less common than they are in adults.
  • (20) These are particularly common in the field of sport.

Drab


Definition:

  • (n.) A low, sluttish woman.
  • (n.) A lewd wench; a strumpet.
  • (n.) A wooden box, used in salt works for holding the salt when taken out of the boiling pans.
  • (v. i.) To associate with strumpets; to wench.
  • (n.) A kind of thick woolen cloth of a dun, or dull brownish yellow, or dull gray, color; -- called also drabcloth.
  • (n.) A dull brownish yellow or dull gray color.
  • (a.) Of a color between gray and brown.
  • (n.) A drab color.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mendl's candy colours contrast sharply with the gothic garb of our hero's enemies and the greys of the prison uniforms – as well as scenes showing the hotel later, in the 1960s, its opulence lost beneath a drab communist refurb.
  • (2) And it will almost certainly continue arriving in dribs and drabs, based on the Sea Dragon's observations.
  • (3) While Klimt was creating modern art there, Hitler was going to the opera to hear Wagner (conducted by the modernist Gustav Mahler), and soon eking a living painting drab topographic scenes.
  • (4) The most visible sign of this is the arrival each day, when parliament is in session in its lavish, marble-decked halls in the new capital of Naypyidaw , of scores of officers, natty in their freshly pressed olive drab.
  • (5) Here was a woman, "dismal, drab, embarrassing," sodden with "self-pity," who in the Golden Notebook had single-handedly set back the women's movement "a good long way".
  • (6) Inside, photographs of these often drab exteriors are contrasted with the vibrantly colourful images of the interiors.
  • (7) It is incredible the bombers did not have tickets but, regardless, they would not have got through the body searches at the gates.” Pavlovic and his wife, Ljiljana, had been selling scarves outside the arena prior to kick-off but, despite having tickets for the match, ambled down towards McDonald’s where they had parked in Impasse de la Cokerie, a drab cul de sac between characterless office blocks, to meet his cousin and her husband.
  • (8) Second half: Barcelona's players have been ready to start the second half for several minutes, while Inter's are emerging from the tunnel in dribs and drabs.
  • (9) A fter five years in the job of chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw will deliver his final annual general report as head of Ofsted on Thursday morning – possibly to his own regret and almost certainly to the regret of education journalists, for whom life can sometimes be a little drab.
  • (10) Photograph: John Brunton Situated smack on the "strada del vino", it is easy to drive straight past this drab-looking tratttoria.
  • (11) The 6.6-kilobase DNA fragment expressed five polypeptides with molecular masses of 15.5, 5, 18, 90, and 32 kilodaltons encoded by the draA, draB, draC, draD, and draE genes, respectively.
  • (12) On Monday, Gao began the latest phase of her crusade, travelling to a drab five-storey courthouse in western Beijing with about a dozen other relatives to file a lawsuit against Malaysia Airlines before a legal deadline that coincides with the disaster’s two-year anniversary.
  • (13) On the surface, the subject could not have been more drab.
  • (14) Slovakia v Paraguay in Bloem: another drab spectacle with the Slovakians managing to run around aimlessly for 90 minutes.
  • (15) And that's absolutely the right, drab clothing to reach for as the post-Leveson debate enters a new round.
  • (16) Despite all the dribs and drabs of innovation in the ocean of old-media rules, we're beginning to see a kind of ideal on the horizon.
  • (17) Anything positive would stand out against what's been a pretty drab backdrop so far.
  • (18) Yet sometimes a little decay here and there, some graffiti, flyers posted on walls and lampposts, can add liveliness to what would otherwise be a drab urban experience.
  • (19) High up in the National Theatre, Patrick Marber is huddled in the corner of a small, drab room.
  • (20) An AQI reading of 300 blots out the sun, smothering the city in drab uniformity.