What's the difference between dull and inept?

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.

Inept


Definition:

  • (a.) Not apt or fit; unfit; unsuitable; improper; unbecoming.
  • (a.) Silly; useless; nonsensical; absurd; foolish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Plibersek’s spokesman said on Friday: “Who is Mr Brandis to dictate the language on the Middle East peace negotiations?” The spokesman said the intervention this week amounted to “another foreign policy embarrassment for the Abbott government, which is why [Brandis] was forced by the foreign minister and the Foreign Affairs Department to rush out a statement about his inept pronouncements.” Labor ran into its own controversy earlier this year when Bill Shorten appeared to telegraph a shift in policy around the description of settlements in a major speech to the Zionist Federation of Australia.
  • (2) Ever since the ex-PD leader Walter Veltroni started praising President Kennedy as a way to jettison communism, this has been an abiding theme, manifesting itself institutionally in the desperate attempt to engineer a US-style two-party system through breathtakingly inept electoral reforms – the latest one, the " Porcellum " (after porcello, swine), was behind the impasse earlier this year.
  • (3) The head seems to float uncomfortably above the collar, while the doublet is ineptly managed.
  • (4) Its structure was elucidated by IR, UV, FAB-MS, and various NMR spectra (including NOE, BBD, INEPT, SR, COSY, NOESY etc.
  • (5) Their barking drew an entertaining rebuke from Ta-Nehisi Coates to which we cannot resist linking, however: Carlson's descent from reasonably credible magazine journalist to inept race hustler is well mapped territory.
  • (6) I have to say that arranging your move so that you actually become homeless for a month is pretty much the definition of inept.
  • (7) The structures of the loureirins 1-4 were elucidated through interpretation of their spectroscopic data, with particular use being made of the selective INEPT nmr technique.
  • (8) As an inexperienced and diplomatically inept minister in the early 1970s, Thatcher clashed with what was later called "the education establishment".
  • (9) The government has handled the "£9,000 student fees" affair ineptly, near paralysed by political correctness.
  • (10) "Mr Hester's job at RBS in the last three years has not been made any easier by the incompetence of EU politicians, whose inept and moribund approach to the sovereign debt crisis has trashed the banking sector's value.
  • (11) spectrum were given for these dolichols by using model compounds and INEPT (insensitive nuclei enhanced by polarization transfer) measurement.
  • (12) The basic principles applied are the VOSY pulse scheme for volume selection and the INEPT sequence for homonuclear polarization transfer from the CH to the CH3 groups.
  • (13) "The crumbling of key pillars of Israel's security … coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel's history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation," declared New York Times columnist Tom Friedman last month.
  • (14) So could I counter with a 'tactically inept' regarding England?
  • (15) But their attempts are suspiciously theatrical and inept – with the "demonstrators" at one point advancing in a hopeless Roman-style assault.
  • (16) Congress granted qualified immunity from liability for peer review participation to physicians, osteopaths and dentists, created a national practitioner data bank to track inept, incompetent or unprofessional physicians, and enacted procedural rules for due process, privilege restrictions, and reporting and disbursement of information.
  • (17) The INEPT (insensitive nucleus enhancement by polarization transfer) experiment [Morris, G. A., & Freeman, R. (1979) J.
  • (18) If you think Isis arose from the US invasion of Iraq, not the vacuum created by its inept occupation and premature withdrawal, good luck again.
  • (19) Friedman and Schwartz made a convincing case that it was inept monetary management by the Federal Reserve Bank that was the main culprit.
  • (20) The present Queen’s legacy may look very different once the future of the monarchy is in the inept hands of her eldest son.