What's the difference between dingy and drab?

Dingy


Definition:

  • (n.) Alt. of Dinghy
  • (superl.) Soiled; sullied; of a dark or dusky color; dark brown; dirty.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Halifax District Hospital's Medical Library, Daytona Beach, Florida was altered from two dingy rooms to a modern, well-equipped Medical Library twice its former size by its maintenance men in six months time, with the help of the librarian's sketches and an architect student from the junior college to draw the plans.A complete renovation was done, eighteen-inch walls between rooms being demolished, plumbing, ceiling, and windows removed.
  • (2) When it is not clogged with weekend traffic, Container – the English word is used in Arabic – is a desolate spot: a lonely stretch of asphalt, four dingy tollbooth-like structures painted white and green, a few bored Israeli soldiers with automatic rifles.
  • (3) Ian Napp, a British former chef, had been photographed with an inflatable dingy in a field "just in case" there was a tsunami.
  • (4) The website shows the rooms are dingy and tasteless: turquoise carpets, small windows, chintz bedspreads.
  • (5) Their first shelter was a dingy basement in a slum far from São Paulo's bustling financial centre.
  • (6) By now his own preference was for the interiors of the Paris Opera, the off-stage spaces, the dingy classrooms and peeling walls.
  • (7) Then, it provides a neat metaphor for the realist's quest for authenticity, the dingy truth of dingy classrooms that lies behind the Opera's glamorous stage façades.
  • (8) "Suddenly the pop star takes off her sheep's clothing and you see the kind of dingy, underground, metal-loving girl from New York who wants to talk about equal rights and go on and on and on about loving yourself.
  • (9) Also in Hackney, the National Trust property Sutton House is the venue for an immersive, LGBT-friendly cinema event Amy Grimehouse , and just down the road, dingy club Vogue Fabrics hosts both straight and gay club nights throughout the week.
  • (10) These prices would be good value for a pretty ordinary B&B in a regional town – for chic digs in London, where you can easily pay £100 for access to a small dingy moth sanctuary, they’re basically unbeatable.
  • (11) His dingy green-walled apartment is now almost stripped bare following a police raid, with the only signs of its former warmth the photos of his sons and daughter left on one wall.
  • (12) The correspondence seen by the Guardian also contains the invitation to Madikizela-Mandela sent by Cikizwa Dingi, personal assistant to ANC national spokesman, Jackson Mthembu.
  • (13) Muhammad told the Guardian he lost everything except the clothes on his back on a journey that included three terrifying hours in the Mediterranean when the dingy he was travelling in between Greece and Turkey capsized.
  • (14) Every institution now has to have a public face, to justify itself: MI6 has emerged from a dingy building in Lambeth to occupy a glitzy palace on the Thames.
  • (15) Standup comedians tend to be a bit frustrated and have to find a different way of showing off – on stage in a dark dingy club.
  • (16) One night the fun had started at the caves and had moved on to a dingy little club down the road.
  • (17) Playing punk rock shows for 10 people in a dingy bar made sense to me.
  • (18) I know he is still there, in his dingy South Bohan apartment, waiting for me to rejoin him.
  • (19) While the old library could be dingy in places, the floors of the new building are washed with daylight, with a continuous line of desks around the floor-to-ceiling windows.
  • (20) The experiment is taking place in a sprawling hangar at Moscow's Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, in a suburb of dingy tower blocks and poplar trees.

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.