What's the difference between dull and sluggish?

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.

Sluggish


Definition:

  • (a.) Habitually idle and lazy; slothful; dull; inactive; as, a sluggish man.
  • (a.) Slow; having little motion; as, a sluggish stream.
  • (a.) Having no power to move one's self or itself; inert.
  • (a.) Characteristic of a sluggard; dull; stupid; tame; simple.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The sluggish flow which results from this vasoconstriction and high venous pressure leads to a haemoconcentration which reduces oedema formation but favours leucocyte and platelet sequestration within the microcirculation.
  • (2) Our findings suggest that (a) the inclusion of a liquid meal provides a reproducible method of measuring orocaecal transit using the lactulose hydrogen breath test, (b) rapid small bowel transit in thyrotoxicosis may be one factor in the diarrhoea which is a feature of the disease and (c) if altered gut transit is the cause of sluggish bowel habit in hypothyroidism, delay in the colon, and not small bowel, is likely to be responsible.
  • (3) Foreign investment has been sluggish because of insecurity, red tape and corruption.
  • (4) These composite data indicated that the definable metabolic defects of these two sisters with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia were the sluggish clearance of cholesterol from the body coupled with low total body synthesis of cholesterol.
  • (5) While demand in the US remains sluggish, Toyota has benefited at home from a revival in demand for its Prius petrol-electric hybrid, Japan's best-selling passenger car for the past five months.
  • (6) It has been established that the structure of depressive phases in sluggish simple schizophrenia includes specific psychopathological signs heralding defect formation and united by the notion "transitory syndrome".
  • (7) This will be vital to offset diminishing contributions from government spending and sluggish household demand.
  • (8) Last Saturday’s winner against Norwich felt like an isolated incident amid sluggish reactions, though the Spain international is clearly quicker to fight his own corner.
  • (9) Household spending has slumped to its lowest rate in nearly two years, underlining the sluggishness of Britain's economy.
  • (10) The visitors had looked the more settled team in the first half here, tribute to their own energetic and diligent midfield and also to a general sluggishness in Chelsea’s passing and movement.
  • (11) When we had a morning practice session, and some players were a bit sluggish, he would call them out to the middle of the pitch and shout: ‘Dilly-ding, dilly-dong!’ When I read this story about Leicester, I just started laughing because all those funny moments with him came rushing back into my head.” That Ranieri has a sense of humour is hardly new information.
  • (12) Sluggish or absent blood flow was observed in retinal arterioles that lay in close proximity to the ILS, and the arterioles themselves appeared narrowed.
  • (13) It was concluded that acetate, lactate, and pyruvate accumulate under growing conditions when P. natriegens is cultivated on glucose (i) because of a rapid initial catabolism of glucose via an aerobic glycolytic pathway and (ii) because of a sluggishly functioning tricarboxylic acid cycle due to the accumulation of NADPH(2) and to repressed levels of key enzymes.
  • (14) A cutoff point of one spermatozoon exhibiting sluggish motility per HPF was the most effective method of classifying the results of the postcoital test (X2(1) = 4.28, P = 0.037, RR = 4.7.
  • (15) In a speech that appears to have upset King, Carney said central banks should be prepared to downgrade their inflation targets in the event of sluggish growth and instead set themselves the task of raising national output.
  • (16) The clinical evaluation of cervical mucus properties requires evaluation of the quality of the mucus, its functional ability, and its interaction with sperm, since it now appears that sperm are stored in the cervix and are released continuously to the upper part of the reproductive tract; in addition, present evidence indicates that cervical mucus acts as a barrier or trap for sluggish and abnormal sperms.
  • (17) These were hybrid cells with conduction velocities and receptive field properties characteristic of more than one of the X, Y and sluggish categories.
  • (18) Low-Earth orbit is quickly becoming the realm of the private sector – including the loose agglomeration of companies known collectively as NewSpace, which have shaken human spaceflight progress out of a sluggish period.
  • (19) LG Photograph: LG Sales of smartwatches have been sluggish, data shows, partly because functionality is limited to notifications, which has not appealed to the mass market .
  • (20) Little known are reports (more common in non-American literature) that female hormones effect a sluggishness of gallbladder function.