What's the difference between dumb and mute?

Dumb


Definition:

  • (a.) Destitute of the power of speech; unable; to utter articulate sounds; as, the dumb brutes.
  • (a.) Not willing to speak; mute; silent; not speaking; not accompanied by words; as, dumb show.
  • (a.) Lacking brightness or clearness, as a color.
  • (v. t.) To put to silence.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Cheers, then, to an apparent alliance of the NME, a few people in London's trendy E1 district and some dumb young musicians, because "New Rave" is upon us, and there is apparently no stopping it.
  • (2) Four brain smears from dogs which died of dumb rabies were positive for Negri bodies while two brain smears obtained from dogs which died of the furious form of rabies were negative.
  • (3) The court heard that MP responded to Nimmo's message of "Dumb blonde bitch" with the message "That's dumb Dr blonde bitch to you".
  • (4) At the moment, most of our electricity and gas meters are dumb, analogue devices: they record your consumption and someone comes round periodically to take a reading.
  • (5) We now show by immunoelectron microscopy that Fab fragments of a desmin-specific monoclonal antibody mixed with the rod lead to dumb-bell-shaped structures.
  • (6) On admission, a dumb-bell type huge tumor with the destruction of the orbital roof was demonstrated on CT scan and MRI.
  • (7) The non-solid bacilli were further classified on the basis of their morphology to the following forms:-- (a) short but evenly stained (b) indented (c) beaded (d) dumb-bell shaped (e) coccoid and (f) fragmented.
  • (8) In an ideal world, such findings might be interpreted as smart women making smart choices, but instead it seems that this research is just adding fuel to the argument that women who don't have children, regardless of the reason, are not just selfish losers but dumb ones as well.
  • (9) Large granules, 160 nm in diameter, already reported in the ITP (KEMALI 1977a), are also shown as well as tiny flat mixed with large flat dense core vesicles of dumb-bell shape.
  • (10) Critics accused the BBC of dumbing down when Kirsty Young replaced Sue Lawley as host of Desert Island Discs, while t he dismissal of Ed Stourton from the Today presenting team was executed shambolically , with the presenter learning his fate from a rival news organisation rather than his bosses.
  • (11) As in canine rabies there are furious and dumb forms of the disease.
  • (12) Charlie Hebdo was launched by a group of "non-conformists" who had previously run a monthly called Hara Kiri (whose subtitle read: "dumb and nasty").
  • (13) He might have been born with a silver spoon and declared bankruptcy four or five times but he is not dumb.
  • (14) A GST on fresh food is an exceptionally dumb strategy in the midst of an obesity crisis | Catherine King Read more Labor said that much of that money would go towards compensating lower income earners, leaving little money for other services.
  • (15) Dumb rabies and cysticerci in dogs being sold to people in rural communities pose potential public health hazards.
  • (16) In a blog published on Friday afternoon entitled "My teenage mistakes" , Weldon said his year-long flirtation would have remained the embarrassing stuff of his youth had he not a few years later done what he described as a "dumb thing" and boasted about his past in an Oxford student newspaper.
  • (17) Mitt's now trying to rebut the "Let Detroit go bankrupt" line o argument, which is dumb.
  • (18) The internet of things is the idea of creating a home where everything is connected to the internet, creating “swarm intelligence” from individually dumb devices.
  • (19) Gove launched an all-out attack on the "educational establishment", claiming it suffered from "defeatism, political correctness and the entrenched culture of dumbing down".
  • (20) "We will tackle head-on the defeatism, the political correctness and the entrenched culture of dumbing down that is at the heart of our educational establishment."

Mute


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To cast off; to molt.
  • (v. t. & i.) To eject the contents of the bowels; -- said of birds.
  • (n.) The dung of birds.
  • (a.) Not speaking; uttering no sound; silent.
  • (a.) Incapable of speaking; dumb.
  • (a.) Not uttered; unpronounced; silent; also, produced by complete closure of the mouth organs which interrupt the passage of breath; -- said of certain letters. See 5th Mute, 2.
  • (a.) Not giving a ringing sound when struck; -- said of a metal.
  • (n.) One who does not speak, whether from physical inability, unwillingness, or other cause.
  • (n.) One who, from deafness, either congenital or from early life, is unable to use articulate language; a deaf-mute.
  • (n.) A person employed by undertakers at a funeral.
  • (n.) A person whose part in a play does not require him to speak.
  • (n.) Among the Turks, an officer or attendant who is selected for his place because he can not speak.
  • (n.) A letter which represents no sound; a silent letter; also, a close articulation; an element of speech formed by a position of the mouth organs which stops the passage of the breath; as, p, b, d, k, t.
  • (n.) A little utensil made of brass, ivory, or other material, so formed that it can be fixed in an erect position on the bridge of a violin, or similar instrument, in order to deaden or soften the tone.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Such conditions may influence the personality of offspring of deaf-mute people.
  • (2) No wonder public discussion of this most unexpected scientific development has so far been muted and respectful, waiting for the expert community that discovered the anomaly by accident – the Opera experiment at Gran Sasso was devised to isolate different varieties of neutrino, not to test Einstein – to work out what it all means, or doesn't.
  • (3) But its protests were far more muted than the complaints which saw off plans for drills there earlier this year.
  • (4) to produce speech for the mute, man-machine communication through speech in industry control, data processing systems and uses in audiological diagnostics.
  • (5) Ten months on, reactions are likely to be more muted.
  • (6) When it transpired that he had, if not in the way he might have wanted, he and his corner leapt in the air, before the realization of the ugly mood of the crowd muted the celebrations.
  • (7) Likewise, his criticism of Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill , which proposed the death penalty for same-sex acts, was muted.
  • (8) Nobody is sure what dangerous chemical imbalance this would create but the Fiver is convinced we'd all be dust come October or November, the earth scorched, with only three survivors roaming o'er the barren landscape: Govan's answer to King Lear, ranting into a hole in the ground; a mute, wild-eyed pundit, staring without blinking into a hole in the ground; and a tall, irritable figure standing in front of the pair of them, screaming in the style popularised by Klaus Kinski, demanding they take a look at his goddamn trouser arrangement, which he has balanced here on the platform of his hand for easy perusal, or to hell with them, for they are no better than pigs, worthless, spineless pigs.
  • (9) Additional studies revealed that the muted effects of PTHrP occurred via a PTH-independent mechanism.
  • (10) Winning a majority muted that speculation without eradicating the ambitions that fuelled it.
  • (11) Eight of 9 Mute swans (Cygnus olor) untied in the river acrossing the central part of Tottori-city died within the period of 40 days of summer in 1989.
  • (12) While calling for an end to the violence and democratic reform, western and other Arab countries have mostly muted their criticism of the killings and repression in Syria for fear of destabilising the country, which plays a strategic role across the Middle East.
  • (13) Another sci-fi film, Mute, which he describes as "my love letter to Blade Runner", is already in development and will be filmed in Berlin.
  • (14) It appeared, however, that she was muting her resistance to an expanded if limited ECB role, clearing the way for central bank and International Monetary Fund interventions that might take the edge off the immediate emergency and provide a breathing space for a more systemic political response.
  • (15) Indeed, the language of the ethic of care may give a voice to nurses who previously felt morally mute.
  • (16) Lysosomal enzyme secretion in response to thrombin treatment was partially reduced in muted platelets and markedly reduced in mocha platelets.
  • (17) Sandwood Bay in Scotland Photograph: Alamy Am Buachaille, a rocky sea stack, stood guard-like to one side, the giant grey slabs which cut into the sea were bathed in frothing waves, and the dim glow of the Cape Wrath lighthouse sent out a muted white beam beyond the cliffs to my right.
  • (18) Even in the wake of Newtown, the shift toward gun safety policies has been relatively muted .
  • (19) Violence, public and domestic, in peace and war, is muted by the modulated tones of civilised life.
  • (20) If I had been seeing red upon learning the dark projections for my health, my world was returning to its known colors, now muted with that knowledge that comes eventually for everyone: that the body is not the friend you thought was.