What's the difference between dull and dunce?

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.

Dunce


Definition:

  • (n.) One backward in book learning; a child or other person dull or weak in intellect; a dullard; a dolt.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mutant alleles of rutabaga act in the germ line cells to partially suppress the developmental defects caused by dunce mutations.
  • (2) Mutant dunce flies have elevated levels of cAMP and exhibit a number of defects including learning deficiencies and female sterility.
  • (3) These homologies, together with prior genetic and biochemical studies, provide unambiguous evidence that dunce+ codes for a phosphodiesterase.
  • (4) The recovery of clones from the differential screen demonstrates that in addition to altering normal behavior, fertility, and cAMP metabolism, dunce mutation confers an alteration in the level of expression of certain genes.
  • (5) The cDNA clone defines dunce exons which are separated by a large intron of 79 kb.
  • (6) We have isolated several genes expressed at abnormal levels in the memory mutant, dunce (dnc), of Drosophila melanogaster.
  • (7) It is basic maths – not so much the Wolf of Wall Street, more the Dunce of Downing Street."
  • (8) The nucleotide sequence of this clone led to the identification of a dunce exon included in at least one transcript so far uncharacterized.
  • (9) In addition, the dunce+ gene product shares a seven-amino acid sequence with a regulatory subunit of cAMP-dependent protein kinase that is predicted to be part of the cAMP binding site.
  • (10) Not all are convinced that Pisa officials should don the dunce cap.
  • (11) We have isolated and sequenced cDNA clones representing portions of the polyadenylylated transcripts of the dunce+ gene.
  • (12) Winter Garden Theatre, New York, starts 9 November A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole didn’t live long enough to see the publication of his celebrated comic novel, so he definitely isn’t around for the theatrical adaptation, which will premier at the Huntington with designs on a Broadway run.
  • (13) The molecular organization of the dunce gene of Drosophila melanogaster has proved to be particularly complex, with two divergently transcribed genes, Sgs-4 and Pig-1, nested within its 79 kb intron (1).
  • (14) Female columnists have not been kind to the group in retrospect; Caitlin Moran basically blamed "Girl Power" for the loss of interest in feminism, while Grace Dent went further by saying that "any student in 2012 who regurgitates this Spice Girls-helped-feminism baloney in a dissertation should have the whole thing shredded and be made to wear a dunce cone in graduation pics".
  • (15) Selection of mutations that suppress dunce sterility has led to the isolation of two rutabaga alleles.
  • (16) The deduced amino acid sequences of part of this region were also homologous to the D. melanogaster dunce PDE and to PDEs from bovine and yeast.
  • (17) Two dunce mutants examined show aberrant RNA expression from this coding region, confirming that this region is the dunce gene.
  • (18) A probe representing the Drosophila dunce+ (dnc+) gene, the structural gene for a cAMP phosphodiesterase (PDEase), detects homologous sequences in many different organisms, including mouse, rat, and human.
  • (19) In both dunce and rutabaga larvae, voltage-clamp analysis of neuromuscular transmission revealed impaired synaptic facilitation and post-tetanic potentiation as well as abnormal responses to direct application of dibutyryl cAMP.
  • (20) Coisogenic lines were constructed which varied at the dunce gene (dnc+ and dncM14 alleles) in order to test this hypothesis.