What's the difference between dull and prosaic?

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.

Prosaic


Definition:

  • (a.) Alt. of Prosaical

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Short of setting up a hotline to the Met Office – or, more prosaically, moving to a country where the weather best suits our condition, as Dawn Binks says several sufferers she knows have done – migraineurs can do little to ensure that the climate is kind to them.
  • (2) More prosaically, but sensibly, the publishing division, which includes all of the company's newspaper titles, will retain the News Corp name when the company's separation occurs in July.
  • (3) He calls himself a micro-economist, or more prosaically, a "data guy".
  • (4) It always seemed too prosaic to say merely that he was governing director of Tennants Estate Ltd from 1967 to 1991 and chairman of the Mustique Company from 1969 to 1987.
  • (5) The prosaic question for the armchair mountaineer is, can the dying be saved?
  • (6) The question of what to do about it is, I'm afraid, disappointingly prosaic.
  • (7) Some of the company's actions are more prosaic than they may first appear.
  • (8) There is a bucolic tendency running deep in the national character, expressing itself in a love of rustic poets and painters, and it is this part of us that has turned to fury at the coalition government and its prosaically named Draft National Planning Policy Framework.
  • (9) If the second Wall Street feels flat in comparison, that's because that culture of greed is no longer novel or outrageous; it's almost prosaic.
  • (10) Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, is less prosaic, warning of an imminent crisis for many households: "Ofgem and the government have massive questions to answer.
  • (11) It has as clear a progression as a common cold, and is no less prosaic in its wanderings: loneliness, or discomfort in one's skin; enjoyable drug use; then reckless, or desperate, drug use; then denial; then recovery, or death.
  • (12) Rather, the answer is far more prosaic, which is French for "boring": fashion writers are quite lazy.
  • (13) Facebook Twitter Pinterest But a more prosaic response to Let the Music Use You might be to say that Knuckles implicitly understood what happened on a nightclub dancefloor because he spent virtually his entire life in nightclubs.
  • (14) And, more prosaically, we know that Rita Ora " dazzled in a low-cut jumpsuit " as she left her hotel today.
  • (15) Now, says Horne: “People here have looked at what Virgin have done on the West Coast line and are excited by the prospect of a similar transformation of services.” The image he uses is “a hotel on wheels”, adding: “There are very few commuters on this line – if people are using it, it’s because they want to, we have to impress them.” The reaction of staff and passengers at York station on Monday was more prosaic, with few changes yet visible to most except the Virgin stickers in the window, new staff badges and plastic Virgin windcheaters concealing old uniforms to keep out the snow showers.
  • (16) This song, a highlight of Prince’s live boxset One Nite Alone … is the exception, an angry horn-driven jam which Prince would perform to a somewhat prosaic video of passengers being hassled as they came through customs while intoning “You must remove your shoes” in a scary tonebox-altered Darth Vader voice.
  • (17) Can you imagine what it was like to move here in the 90s, from the land of the prosaically titled Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place, to a country where one of the most popular shows was called Drop The Dead Donkey?
  • (18) The crowd, 40,181, was the lowest by some distance since this stadium opened in 2007 and, with two shots on target all night, it was a prosaic way for England to prepare for their first Euro 2016 qualifier in Switzerland on Monday.
  • (19) But Johnson had other more prosaic work to do and there were moments when he looked less than comfortable doing it.
  • (20) The classic Rendell hallmarks were all there from the beginning – the sense of place, the delicate filleting of the characters’ psyches, the avoidance of the prosaic both in character and in motivation.