What's the difference between doldrums and humdrum?

Doldrums


Definition:

  • (n. pl.) A part of the ocean near the equator, abounding in calms, squalls, and light, baffling winds, which sometimes prevent all progress for weeks; -- so called by sailors.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It might sound like chump change, but the PTC alone amounts to $1 billion a year, and industry advocates insist that wind would hit the doldrums without these subsidies.
  • (2) Labour is in the doldrums and we have to ask ourselves why.
  • (3) With rates in the doldrums, the news last week that inflation has reached its highest point in the past two-and-a-half years means many cash savers are now losing money in real terms.
  • (4) It does feel like British chocolate is making a renaissance after being in the doldrums for a few decades.” As well as its network of shops, Hotel Chocolat owns a cocoa plantation on St Lucia, which is home to a luxury hotel where a two-week stay costs up to £10,000.
  • (5) The pound foolishness of the coalition's efforts becomes even clearer when set against its hope that our legal services market can lead the UK out of current economic doldrums.
  • (6) Housing market activity remains stuck in the doldrums, which seems highly likely to maintain downward pressure on prices in the early months of 2011 at least.
  • (7) But if the Tories are split, the pro-EU Lib Dems are back in the invisibility zone and Labour is equivocal, it’s easy to see how the Brexit camp might win the day if the economy is again in the doldrums by 2017.
  • (8) Those efforts, combined with better management and improved stock control, have lifted the company out of the doldrums.
  • (9) For all the optimism and green shoots of recovery after years in the doldrums, the old guard, no matter how minimal their impact on the pitch in France, deserve praise as they leave.
  • (10) So far Fox’s fawning coverage of Trump, and in some cases total avoidance of certain topics unflattering to the president, hasn’t been enough to lift him out of his presidential doldrums.
  • (11) He did a good job of helping Manchester City and Sheffield United out of the doldrums, but perhaps unwisely left the former when a return to Everton became possible, explaining at the time that City felt like an affair whereas Everton was a marriage.
  • (12) More hot acts coming out of the Montreal music scene Doldrums Airick Woodhead AKA Doldrums is Grimes's brother from another mother.
  • (13) On the other side of the equation, those who share Mr Carney's desire to flee the economic doldrums should ask why the Bank's target is only 7%, rather than 6% or lower.
  • (14) I’m not sure where we are on the chart, or when the next comedy doldrums is, but he’ll tell you, and what will rise to take its place.
  • (15) So far this year, 40 companies have raised £5.7bn after the market for new shares went into overdrive following years in the doldrums, figures supplied by Thomson Reuters show.
  • (16) Despite increasing police crackdowns, yakuza membership is rising amid richer pickings from extortion, prostitution, drug smuggling, property deals and even stock market transactions as the Japanese economy emerges from the doldrums.
  • (17) Prices have now increased by 8.6%, or £13,000, since January 2009, when the housing market was in the doldrums, and the society said that unless they fall next month, the annual rate of house price inflation would return to double figures for the first time since May 2007.
  • (18) Business lending remains in the doldrums despite the economic recovery after the Bank of England's Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) recorded another poor performance in the second quarter.
  • (19) Having only recently engaged with the care sector in our role as brand consultants to the National Skills Academy for Social Care , we have a few thoughts on how social care might begin to climb its way out of the doldrums.
  • (20) For anyone seeking out an archetype for Doldrums Britain, Corby has much to offer, at first glance at least.

Humdrum


Definition:

  • (a.) Monotonous; dull; commonplace.
  • (n.) A dull fellow; a bore.
  • (n.) Monotonous and tedious routine.
  • (n.) A low cart with three wheels, drawn by one horse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As a recovering graduate of an institution that played host to a similar bunch of charmers, all I can say is, so far, so humdrum.
  • (2) Gardiner, of course, is not Dominic Jones or Samuel Rhodes; the reality is both more interesting and more humdrum.
  • (3) Her only digression from a rather set, humdrum routine came when in 1975 she divorced her husband and then two years later remarried him.
  • (4) The match took a while to warm up, with Mark Noble’s sweet strike against the underside of the bar the best of a humdrum first half.
  • (5) The rain came down but, with apologies to Morrissey, this was anything but a humdrum town.
  • (6) The learned judge, now back at the more humdrum business of the court of appeal, may be reflecting on the advice of whoever it was who first advised against picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
  • (7) It was both surreal and humdrum at the same time, and that's when I realised just how odd a period we had lived through."
  • (8) Mom always thought such things were middle-class, but I longed for the humdrum of middle-class.
  • (9) Man of the Match - Cristiano Ronaldo His excitement and joy were happily contagious in a humdrum match.
  • (10) She’s free of humdrum routines like school and homework, and is completely self-sufficient.
  • (11) This humdrum victory for Manchester United has a considerable impact on the league table with Sir Alex Ferguson's team, inspired by Cristiano Ronaldo, now four points clear of Chelsea and bristling with a wicked sense of pleasure about the vulnerability of their main challengers.
  • (12) As he said in an interview in the Times on Saturday: "All Tories at whatever level, even a humdrum municipal politician like me, want a Conservative government back in 2015."
  • (13) Fall of the 'Fake Sheikh': how the tables turned on Mazher Mahmood Read more It must be especially galling that his downfall came about after one of his more humdrum sting operations, involving the singer and TV personality Tulisa Contostavlos.
  • (14) At the England squad announcement, which took place at the Luton headquarters of their sponsors Vauxhall, Roy Hodgson was asked if his team was more like a humdrum family saloon or a sports car.
  • (15) Explorers, cartographers and geographical pioneers from Mercator to Palin are presumably humdrum intellectual backmarkers and the study of authors such as Dickens or Eliot, Günter Grass or Alain-Fournier a form of spiritual imprisonment?"
  • (16) His earliest surviving work, Rien que les heures (1926), took its cue from the surrealist notion that, viewed in the appropriate way, the most humdrum districts of a modern city such as Paris could be as exotic as anything shot in the Arctic or the Pacific.
  • (17) Gervais always believed you should write what you know, so when he sat down to create The Office with Stephen Merchant, he set it in the moribund Home Counties where he grew up, in a humdrum working environment not unlike the one where he’d spent the best part of a decade.
  • (18) As a linguist, he confessed himself to be humdrum, but wherever the English language prevailed, he could feel at home.
  • (19) At their best, soaps find drama in the everyday and the mark of Wainwright’s work is that, however dramatic, there is a respect for the drudgery and humdrum nature of much of life.
  • (20) Everton came close to extending their lead five minutes from the break, when a good shot by Séamus Coleman was matched by a diving save from Guzan, yet those highlights apart the first half was a fairly humdrum affair.

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