dull.
Lacking the ability to cut easily; not sharp.
Meaning & usage
Lacking the ability to cut easily; not sharp.
All these knives are dull.
Boring; not exciting or interesting.
He sat through the dull lecture and barely stayed awake.
Not shiny; having a matte finish or no particular luster or brightness.
Choose a dull finish to hide fingerprints.
Not bright or intelligent; stupid; having slow understanding.
Sluggish, listless.
Bored, depressed, down.
I felt dull all day.
Cloudy, overcast.
It's a dull day.
Insensible; unfeeling.
Heavy; lifeless; inert.
Not intense; felt indistinctly or only slightly.
Pressing on the bruise produces a dull pain.
Not clear, muffled. (of a noise or sound)
Where this word comes from
From Middle English dull, dul (also dyll, dill, dwal), from Old English dol (“dull, foolish, erring, heretical; foolish, silly; presumptuous”), from Proto-West Germanic *dol, from Proto-Germanic *dulaz, from earlier *dwulaz, a variant of *dwalaz (“stunned, mad, foolish, misled”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰwel-, *dʰewel- (“to dim, dull, cloud, make obscure, swirl, whirl”). Cognate with Scots dull, doll (“slow to understand or hear, deaf, dull”), North Frisian dol (“rash, unthinking, giddy, flippant”), Dutch dol (“crazy, mad, insane”), Low German dul, dol (“mad, silly, stupid, fatuous”), German toll (“crazy, mad, wild, fantastic”), Danish dval (“foolish, absurd”), Icelandic dulur (“secretive, silent”), West-Flemish dul (angry, furious).
To render dull; to remove or blunt an edge or something that was sharp.
Years of misuse have dulled the tools.
To soften, moderate or blunt; to make dull, stupid, or sluggish; to stupefy.
He drinks to dull the pain.
To lose a sharp edge; to become dull.
A razor will dull with use.
To render dim or obscure; to sully; to tarnish.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English dull, dul (also dyll, dill, dwal), from Old English dol (“dull, foolish, erring, heretical; foolish, silly; presumptuous”), from Proto-West Germanic *dol, from Proto-Germanic *dulaz, from earlier *dwulaz, a variant of *dwalaz (“stunned, mad, foolish, misled”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰwel-, *dʰewel- (“to dim, dull, cloud, make obscure, swirl, whirl”). Cognate with Scots dull, doll (“slow to understand or hear, deaf, dull”), North Frisian dol (“rash, unthinking, giddy, flippant”), Dutch dol (“crazy, mad, insane”), Low German dul, dol (“mad, silly, stupid, fatuous”), German toll (“crazy, mad, wild, fantastic”), Danish dval (“foolish, absurd”), Icelandic dulur (“secretive, silent”), West-Flemish dul (angry, furious).
A noose of string, metal wire, or hair used to snare an animal, especially a fish.
Where this word comes from
Probably from Irish dul, dol (“loop, noose, snare”).
To fish (or snare an animal, especially a fish) with such a noose.
Where this word comes from
Probably from Irish dul, dol (“loop, noose, snare”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.