What's the difference between dull and soporific?

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.

Soporific


Definition:

  • (a.) Causing sleep; tending to cause sleep; soporiferous; as, the soporific virtues of opium.
  • (n.) A medicine, drug, plant, or other agent that has the quality of inducing sleep; a narcotic.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The maximum soporific effect did not occur until 90-120 s after injection.
  • (2) His answer threatened a soporific summer-long contest that would expose a great gap between the self-styled people's party and the people themselves.
  • (3) 'P ublic sector commissioning": I can't think of a phrase that conveys something so important and yet sounds so soporific.
  • (4) Soporific effect of hexenal was distinctly increased in the burns, which correlated to the severity of thermic impairment.
  • (5) Pebble-dashed walls, red roof tiles, Velux windows, cherry trees... these things make me think not of daring strokes of oil on canvas, but of the safe, the soporific - a round of golf, perhaps, or a gentle Sunday-night sitcom.
  • (6) Less drugs were used in general, and the use of tranquillizers and soporifics was cut down to a third.
  • (7) Higher doses of naloxone (1Opmol into the LC) were however, required to antagonize the behavioural and ECoG soporific effects induced by the Kappa-receptor agonist U 50,488H.
  • (8) The drug is well tolerated by the patients and does not produce any inhibitory or soporific action.
  • (9) And, intriguingly, a 2009 study at Mashhad University in Iran revealed an extract of saffron did have soporific qualities, on mice at least.
  • (10) Instead, the atmosphere is soporific, with an underlying threat of menace.
  • (11) Toxicological urine analysis for drugs--directed mainly at soporifics, sedatives, tranquilizers, and pain-relievers--on 84 patients involved in industrial accidents yielded the following results.
  • (12) What had been a sombre occasion for City fans as they looked at an Etihad Stadium dugout without Mancini for a first time since December 2009 became further muted when a soporific start to the game had ended with Anthony Pilkington opening the scoring for Norwich.
  • (13) 1 Experiments were performed on a variety of tissues from different species to establish whether or not the properties of p-chlorophenylalanine methyl ester (PCPA) included a 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT)-like action which might explain the soporific action of PCPA in chicks.
  • (14) Because of their pharmacologic action, alcohol and high doses of soporifics used as remedies may produce REM-deficit sleep and actually prolong insomnia.
  • (15) Imagine my surprise in the morning to find it was gone 7am – the soporific effect of the loud snoring made my baby sleep through the night for the first time!
  • (16) Long sleep (LS) and short sleep (SS) mice have a differential sensitivity to the behavioral actions of an adenosine agonist, R-phenylisopropyl-adenosine (PIA) that parallels their differential sensitivity to the soporific effects of ethanol.
  • (17) If so, the soporific way Per Mertesacker dawdled in possession and Kieran Gibbs clumsily punted the ball into the air suggested there had been scant impact.
  • (18) After 53 days of alcohol ingestion there was no evidence of tolerance to the soporific effects of parenterally administered ethanol and removal of the ethanol solutions failed to produce any signs of alcohol withdrawal.
  • (19) Further, much evidence also supports the conclusion that most of these hypnotic-depressants and anesthetics could exert their soporific influence by a potentiation of GABA activity.
  • (20) Recent evidence, as well as reevaluated previous evidence, indicates that Long-Sleep mice are more sensitive to the soporific effects of three major classes of CNS depressants (alcohols, barbiturates, and benzodiazepines), as well as many other anesthesia-inducing compounds (adenosine, chloral hydrate, trichloroethanol, paraldehyde, nitrous oxide, enflurane, and isoflurane).