dulness

English

Noun

dulness (usually uncountable, plural dulnesses)

  1. Archaic spelling of dullness.
    • 1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], chapter VII, in Emma: […], volume III, London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC, page 113:
      At first it was downright dulness to Emma. She had never seen Frank Churchill so silent and stupid. He said nothing worth hearing — looked without seeing — admired without intelligence — listened without knowing what she said.
    • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “chapter XIII, Democracy”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book III (The Modern Worker):
      A smack of all Human Life lies in the Tailor: its wild struggles towards beauty, dignity, freedom, victory; and how, hemmed in by Sedan and Huddersfield, by Nescience, Dulness, Prurience, and other sad necessities and laws of Nature, it has attained just to this: Grey Savagery of Three Sacks with a hem!
    • 1887, Medical Press and Circular, volume 94, page 461:
      When all signs of effusion, dulness, pain, œgophony, and cough had disappeared he was dieted, stimulated, and tonicked.

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