What's the difference between dull and lull?

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.

Lull


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To cause to rest by soothing influences; to compose; to calm; to soothe; to quiet.
  • (v. i.) To become gradually calm; to subside; to cease or abate for a time; as, the storm lulls.
  • (n.) The power or quality of soothing; that which soothes; a lullaby.
  • (n.) A temporary cessation of storm or confusion.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Dictated by underlying physicochemical constraints, deceived at times by the lulling tones of the siren entropy, and constantly vulnerable to the vagaries of other more pervasive forms of biological networking and information transfer encoded in the genes of virus and invading microorganisms, protein biorecognition in higher life forms, and particularly in mammals, represents the finely tuned molecular avenues for the genome to transfer its information to the next generation.
  • (2) Spurs were almost sleepwalking to a comfortable win, with even the crowd lulled into the inevitability of it all, when sloppiness flared.
  • (3) The reason for this odd period of apparent inactivity is not just the lull caused by the summer break or even the shock of the British vote to leave the EU.
  • (4) A definite increase was noticed in the number of cases per block following lull years in 1984 and 1987.
  • (5) There was anecdotal evidence to suggest revenge pornography images were being circulated among teenagers in schools and applications such as Snapchat (where photos disappear after a few seconds) were lulling young people into a false sense of security.
  • (6) There's a brief lull as Seattle try to just get their collective foot on the ball and try to maybe calm what's still a fantastically raucous crowd.
  • (7) Let us not forget that returning veterans of the "war to end all wars were promised a "land fit for heroes", yet what they got post-1918 was poverty, squalor, unemployment and, after a short lull, more war.
  • (8) So, something of a summer lull, but we'll do our best.
  • (9) There's a lull while Mark Hudson gets treatment for cramp.
  • (10) Word of their last-minute intervention to delay the sanctions never filtered down to working-level officials at the State Department during the holiday lull.
  • (11) 6.15am After an hour and a half of furious exchanges, there was a lull in the fighting.
  • (12) Animals that were subjected to sham surgery or anesthesia alone showed a delay of 4.4 h in the reappearance of LH secretion, similar to the lull in LH pulsations normally observed at the time of day.
  • (13) First comes a feeling of euphoria: then the diver gets overconfident, lulled into a false sense of security, and dangerously overestimates how long they have left.
  • (14) Shortly after 4pm there was a brief lull when Father Hugh Mullan, a 40-year-old priest who lived in Springfield Park, remonstrated with the crowds.
  • (15) After a deliberately hazy and meandering first half – one that lulls both reader and characters into a false sense of security – the second part of the novel barely breathes.
  • (16) The poem is structured like a lament, the soldiers' epitaphs interspersed with direct translations of Homer's extended similes, each of which is transcribed, lullingly, twice over.
  • (17) The next time you hear mollifying words from Rudd that our rising debt levels are at reasonable levels compared to other countries, think about how Britons were lulled into the financial danger zone and ask yourself: are we on the same trajectory?
  • (18) At the moment, there's a bit of a lull and it's very quiet.
  • (19) Midnight in Paris , his biggest box-office earner to date , might have lulled you into assuming late-stage Allen was pipe-and-slippers stuff.
  • (20) Barcelona did succeed in lulling United into a false sense of security, however, for when they put together their first meaningful attack after 10 minutes the defensive line in front of Van der Sar crumbled alarmingly to allow the goalkeeper to be beaten at his near post.