What's the difference between dull and shiny?

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.

Shiny


Definition:

  • (superl.) Bright; luminous; clear; unclouded.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) You've got that shiny new promotion and the job looks great - but do you really know what you're letting yourself in for?
  • (2) From his 19th-floor newsroom Eurípedes Alcântara enjoys a spectacular view over the "new Brazil"; helicopters flit through the afternoon sky, shiny new cars honk their way across town, tower blocks and luxury shopping centres sprout like turnips from the urban sprawl.
  • (3) Every bit of her gleams with a sweet and shiny polish: which is probably a natural residue of her southern-belle charm, but is probably also partly attributable to the professional gloss the 20-year-old seems to have acquired with remarkable ease over her nascent two-year film career.
  • (4) This is why, preposterously, America is able to confirm plans to send four shiny F-16 fighter jets to Egyptian military on Thursday, while still talking democracy and inclusion for Egypt's transitional process.
  • (5) With her background in radio, news and current affairs her supporters say she realises that if she wants to be director general she needs more populist programming and the "shiny floor experience" that the Vision post would bring - but she dislikes exposure so much it is not obvious she would enjoy the public pressures of the top job.
  • (6) The first symptom is usually Raynaud's phenomenon, followed by skin changes; at the beginning the skin is swollen and oedematous, and then becomes thick, taut, shiny and atrophic.
  • (7) But Sky, which has built its business on the back of Premier League football and other live sports, chose Wednesday to talk up its new schedule and technological advances at its own shiny new £330m studio complex in west London.
  • (8) Outside the branch in Rochdale, sandwiched between a Nationwide and a bookmakers, Nora McDowell, a retired school cook whose son works at the bank's shiny new Manchester headquarters, said she was disappointed the bank would not be owned by the mutual any more.
  • (9) I can think of hordes of politicians who look worse and "weirder", with wet little pouty-mouths, strange shiny skin, mad glaring eyes, deathly pale demeanour, blank gaze and an unhealthy quantity of fat (I can't name them, because it's rude to make personal remarks), and I don't hear anyone calling them "weird", or mocking their looks, except for the odd bold cartoonist, but when it comes to Miliband , it's be-as-rude-as-you-like time.
  • (10) Equipment Let's be honest: good coffee depends heavily on equipment, which is why so many connoisseurs generally prefer to go out to a cafe with huge, shiny professional machines and baristas who have studied their craft in Milan and Melbourne, while their own over-complicated, underpowered espresso-makers gather dust in the kitchen.
  • (11) Facebook Twitter Pinterest The shiny new Postman Pat and his helicopter.
  • (12) Sitting in a shiny studio peopled with uniformed soldiers, athletes, doctors and more, a heavily bronzed Putin held forth for four hours and 47 minutes, beating his previous record by 15 minutes.
  • (13) Ownership of eight cattle and a shiny steel roof on their wood hut indicates relative prosperity.
  • (14) • theglory.co Chosen by music, satire and cabaret duo Bourgeois and Maurice Soho Theatre Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Richard Davenport Soho has undergone so many facelifts in recent years, it has begun to take on traits of the ageing celebrity: plastic, shiny, hard to find the personality.
  • (15) 1. pale mucosa; 2. shiny surface and 3. prominent submucosal vessels.
  • (16) Shareholders may be forgiven for thinking wistfully of the £55 which Pfizer offered to pay for each of their shiny shares.
  • (17) This was made more explicit as the show developed – the addition of shiny PVC jackets in red, yellow and orange had the clean, zesty futurism popular during the decade.
  • (18) Europe’s elites have surely been guilty of letting political idealism run ahead of hard-nosed economics – thinking that by constructing a shiny new set of institutions and rules, they could just legislate away the deep differences between European economies.
  • (19) It has a full operating theatre, with shiny metal and glass equipment.
  • (20) It's causing Kenya – despite all our growth, the shiny buildings, all the nice cars – to head towards failure."