What's the difference between dull and insipid?

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.

Insipid


Definition:

  • (a.) Wanting in the qualities which affect the organs of taste; without taste or savor; vapid; tasteless; as, insipid drink or food.
  • (a.) Wanting in spirit, life, or animation; uninteresting; weak; vapid; flat; dull; heavy; as, an insipid woman; an insipid composition.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is unacceptable in this city for us to play like that in a game of such importance to the people, against your local rivals that are at the bottom of the league, who fought for every single ball and we weren’t good enough.” Valencia’s captain, Paco Alcacer, also gave a scathing assessment of the team’s insipid performance.
  • (2) Browne said: "I have some unease that we are trying to pitch ourselves as a party that splits the difference between the other two … there's a sense of insipid centrism that is reassuringly unthreatening to people.
  • (3) The next morning, as the Lib Dems tried to come to terms with a media that had, overnight, recast their leader from insipid also-ran to hero, poll results that Clegg could not have dreamed of 24 hours earlier were still pouring out.
  • (4) In cases when the insipid signal was reinforced by salt food and the animal ate it (though during thirst it rejected the food), strong cortex activation was observed with the involvement of paraventricular parts of the hypothalamus.
  • (5) Instead, Cissé was left unattended to glance into the corner and you could almost hear the offers coming in for McClaren, who had given his players an expletive-filled rebuke after last week’s insipid defeat to Leicester , to pen a study on man-management.
  • (6) She's immediately more commanding and less insipid than Abi.
  • (7) Jol came into the game beleaguered as Fulham extended their sorry start to the season with an insipid defeat at Southampton last weekend and a mid-week Capital One Cup exit at the hands of Leicester City.
  • (8) When they did their efforts were insipid, summed up by an incident when Kevin Toner spent so long in space on the left waving for the ball that the crowd cheered when he received it, only for the teenager to put his cross straight out of play.
  • (9) Istiklal made Broadway look like a neon bauble, and the Champs Élysée seem insipid.
  • (10) England travelled to Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday night with their squad severely depleted by injury and the performance in the insipid 1-1 draw against the Republic of Ireland having drawn stinging criticism from a former national striker, Gary Lineker.
  • (11) Taarabt was not needed against an insipid Aston Villa .
  • (12) In terms of hypophyseal function, the ex-novo onset of postoperative pan-hypopituitarism and insipid diabetes was only observed in one case.
  • (13) The effectiveness of 1-deamino-8-d-arginine-vasopressin (DDAVP) has been evaluated in a case of insipid hypothalamo-hypophyseal familial diabetes.
  • (14) When you get to the one structure designed by Herzog & de Meuron at the end – a series of wooden barns for Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food movement – you sense the whole thing might actually have been a bit insipid if left in the hands of their restrained Swiss good taste.
  • (15) Insipid nationalism is a great way to displace the problems of “extreme capitalism” on to a particular ethnicity or minority group.
  • (16) Supporters jeered the side during another insipid United display.
  • (17) When lateral ventricle infusion of HS was performed in rats with a hereditary lack of Vp (diabetes insipidic rats) no pressor response was obtained.
  • (18) Bruce had described this game as “bigger than the FA Cup final” but his side failed to stir themselves sufficiently during an insipid first-half display that only sparked to life once Mahrez struck.
  • (19) Fletcher agreed that the insipid championship defence that has left United 17 points behind Liverpool, the leaders, had hurt the reputation of the club and players.
  • (20) For Leeds, whose last home win was in March against Ipswich, there was plenty of defiance on the terraces, with whole-hearted chants for the Leeds owner, Massimo Cellino, to go but there was little on the pitch as they produced another insipid home performance.