What's the difference between humdrum and prosaic?

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.

Prosaic


Definition:

  • (a.) Alt. of Prosaical

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Short of setting up a hotline to the Met Office – or, more prosaically, moving to a country where the weather best suits our condition, as Dawn Binks says several sufferers she knows have done – migraineurs can do little to ensure that the climate is kind to them.
  • (2) More prosaically, but sensibly, the publishing division, which includes all of the company's newspaper titles, will retain the News Corp name when the company's separation occurs in July.
  • (3) He calls himself a micro-economist, or more prosaically, a "data guy".
  • (4) It always seemed too prosaic to say merely that he was governing director of Tennants Estate Ltd from 1967 to 1991 and chairman of the Mustique Company from 1969 to 1987.
  • (5) The prosaic question for the armchair mountaineer is, can the dying be saved?
  • (6) The question of what to do about it is, I'm afraid, disappointingly prosaic.
  • (7) Some of the company's actions are more prosaic than they may first appear.
  • (8) There is a bucolic tendency running deep in the national character, expressing itself in a love of rustic poets and painters, and it is this part of us that has turned to fury at the coalition government and its prosaically named Draft National Planning Policy Framework.
  • (9) If the second Wall Street feels flat in comparison, that's because that culture of greed is no longer novel or outrageous; it's almost prosaic.
  • (10) Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, is less prosaic, warning of an imminent crisis for many households: "Ofgem and the government have massive questions to answer.
  • (11) It has as clear a progression as a common cold, and is no less prosaic in its wanderings: loneliness, or discomfort in one's skin; enjoyable drug use; then reckless, or desperate, drug use; then denial; then recovery, or death.
  • (12) Rather, the answer is far more prosaic, which is French for "boring": fashion writers are quite lazy.
  • (13) Facebook Twitter Pinterest But a more prosaic response to Let the Music Use You might be to say that Knuckles implicitly understood what happened on a nightclub dancefloor because he spent virtually his entire life in nightclubs.
  • (14) And, more prosaically, we know that Rita Ora " dazzled in a low-cut jumpsuit " as she left her hotel today.
  • (15) Now, says Horne: “People here have looked at what Virgin have done on the West Coast line and are excited by the prospect of a similar transformation of services.” The image he uses is “a hotel on wheels”, adding: “There are very few commuters on this line – if people are using it, it’s because they want to, we have to impress them.” The reaction of staff and passengers at York station on Monday was more prosaic, with few changes yet visible to most except the Virgin stickers in the window, new staff badges and plastic Virgin windcheaters concealing old uniforms to keep out the snow showers.
  • (16) This song, a highlight of Prince’s live boxset One Nite Alone … is the exception, an angry horn-driven jam which Prince would perform to a somewhat prosaic video of passengers being hassled as they came through customs while intoning “You must remove your shoes” in a scary tonebox-altered Darth Vader voice.
  • (17) Can you imagine what it was like to move here in the 90s, from the land of the prosaically titled Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place, to a country where one of the most popular shows was called Drop The Dead Donkey?
  • (18) The crowd, 40,181, was the lowest by some distance since this stadium opened in 2007 and, with two shots on target all night, it was a prosaic way for England to prepare for their first Euro 2016 qualifier in Switzerland on Monday.
  • (19) But Johnson had other more prosaic work to do and there were moments when he looked less than comfortable doing it.
  • (20) The classic Rendell hallmarks were all there from the beginning – the sense of place, the delicate filleting of the characters’ psyches, the avoidance of the prosaic both in character and in motivation.