What's the difference between humdrum and mundane?

Humdrum


Definition:

  • (a.) Monotonous; dull; commonplace.
  • (n.) A dull fellow; a bore.
  • (n.) Monotonous and tedious routine.
  • (n.) A low cart with three wheels, drawn by one horse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As a recovering graduate of an institution that played host to a similar bunch of charmers, all I can say is, so far, so humdrum.
  • (2) Gardiner, of course, is not Dominic Jones or Samuel Rhodes; the reality is both more interesting and more humdrum.
  • (3) Her only digression from a rather set, humdrum routine came when in 1975 she divorced her husband and then two years later remarried him.
  • (4) The match took a while to warm up, with Mark Noble’s sweet strike against the underside of the bar the best of a humdrum first half.
  • (5) The rain came down but, with apologies to Morrissey, this was anything but a humdrum town.
  • (6) The learned judge, now back at the more humdrum business of the court of appeal, may be reflecting on the advice of whoever it was who first advised against picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
  • (7) It was both surreal and humdrum at the same time, and that's when I realised just how odd a period we had lived through."
  • (8) Mom always thought such things were middle-class, but I longed for the humdrum of middle-class.
  • (9) Man of the Match - Cristiano Ronaldo His excitement and joy were happily contagious in a humdrum match.
  • (10) She’s free of humdrum routines like school and homework, and is completely self-sufficient.
  • (11) This humdrum victory for Manchester United has a considerable impact on the league table with Sir Alex Ferguson's team, inspired by Cristiano Ronaldo, now four points clear of Chelsea and bristling with a wicked sense of pleasure about the vulnerability of their main challengers.
  • (12) As he said in an interview in the Times on Saturday: "All Tories at whatever level, even a humdrum municipal politician like me, want a Conservative government back in 2015."
  • (13) Fall of the 'Fake Sheikh': how the tables turned on Mazher Mahmood Read more It must be especially galling that his downfall came about after one of his more humdrum sting operations, involving the singer and TV personality Tulisa Contostavlos.
  • (14) At the England squad announcement, which took place at the Luton headquarters of their sponsors Vauxhall, Roy Hodgson was asked if his team was more like a humdrum family saloon or a sports car.
  • (15) Explorers, cartographers and geographical pioneers from Mercator to Palin are presumably humdrum intellectual backmarkers and the study of authors such as Dickens or Eliot, Günter Grass or Alain-Fournier a form of spiritual imprisonment?"
  • (16) His earliest surviving work, Rien que les heures (1926), took its cue from the surrealist notion that, viewed in the appropriate way, the most humdrum districts of a modern city such as Paris could be as exotic as anything shot in the Arctic or the Pacific.
  • (17) Gervais always believed you should write what you know, so when he sat down to create The Office with Stephen Merchant, he set it in the moribund Home Counties where he grew up, in a humdrum working environment not unlike the one where he’d spent the best part of a decade.
  • (18) As a linguist, he confessed himself to be humdrum, but wherever the English language prevailed, he could feel at home.
  • (19) At their best, soaps find drama in the everyday and the mark of Wainwright’s work is that, however dramatic, there is a respect for the drudgery and humdrum nature of much of life.
  • (20) Everton came close to extending their lead five minutes from the break, when a good shot by Séamus Coleman was matched by a diving save from Guzan, yet those highlights apart the first half was a fairly humdrum affair.

Mundane


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to the world; worldly; earthly; terrestrial; as, the mundane sphere.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But most instances are more mundane: the majority of fraud cases in recent years have emerged from scientists either falsifying images – deliberately mislabelling scans and micrographs – or fabricating or altering their recorded data.
  • (2) This morning he has mundane tasks to attend to – the logistics of players’ luggage for Basel – but the man they call Monchi is the sporting director and the architect who transformed the club.
  • (3) This requirement is one that Americans comply with every day to engage in mundane activities like cashing a check, opening a bank account or boarding a plane,” said Reed Clay, a special assistant under Abbott.
  • (4) The low number of scorable dream reports collected did not reveal a heightened incidence of "masochistic" or "negative" content, indeed were rather mundane.
  • (5) Today's demands are more mundane: hostage-takers range from single mothers to the nearly retired - they want jobs, proper pay and no brutal layoffs.
  • (6) Recent research in Delhi has revealed more mundane causes for high levels of violence and harassment.
  • (7) Finally, Guardian sports reporter turned ace observationalist Josh Widdicombe has the ability to find the sparkle in the mundane that puts him in line to become the next Sean Lock.
  • (8) Our current understanding of these disease processes is discussed in an effort to review the current status of both the mundane and the esoteric infections of the kidney.
  • (9) The perhaps disappointingly mundane answer, however, lies in a television programme.
  • (10) What seems the epitome of mundane routine for the average British commuter is being seen as near miraculous in a city where, like Los Angeles, the car is king and the train is nowhere in sight when navigating the sprawling suburbs.
  • (11) Many organisms construct structural ceramic (biomineral) composites from seemingly mundane materials; cell-mediated processes control both the nucleation and growth of mineral and the development of composite microarchitecture.
  • (12) In any case, Caine’s interest was piqued by more mundane matters: it was the first time he had been asked to play a conductor.
  • (13) Modern research has confirmed that memories for emotionally intense situations are unusually vivid and detailed, but it has also shown that they are no more accurate than mundane memories.
  • (14) These are the same mundane, bureaucratic factors that conspired to prevent any kind of action in Rwanda , 20 years ago.
  • (15) Published in their original handwritten form, the minutes of meetings of the Bank’s Court of Directors from 1914 to 45 , and of another key decision-making body, the Committee of the Treasury, from 1914 to 1931 , reveal a rich interweaving of the Earth-shattering and the mundane, which carried several echoes of the most recent crisis period of 2007-09 – minutes from which were released by the Bank on Tuesday.
  • (16) I think it’s useless to be afraid, actually … I believe that when you do things, when you decide an action, any fear goes away because action is stronger than fear.” Back in Moscow there are more mundane problems to worry about.
  • (17) Jimmy McGovern's saga of the ill-fated residents of The Street was similarly afflicted, despite its pedigree, as was Broadchurch, the unremitting Southcliffe and Prey, the recent Mancunian take on The Fugitive which managed to be both far-fetched and gruellingly mundane.
  • (18) In Scott & Bailey , for example, a good deal of the police work is mundane and the characters are bedevilled by the kinds of real-life domestic troubles that normally receive little more than lip service in police procedure.
  • (19) To the casual observer, emails between CIA staff and Bigelow's team have a somewhat mundane quality to them, though they do suggest a certain fanboyesque enthusiasm for the Hollywood project.
  • (20) Although rare, eosinophilic granuloma can be associated with cutaneous lesions, sometimes isolated and mundane in appearance.