different between dullness vs hebetude

English

Alternative forms

• dulness

Etymology

From dull +? -ness.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?d?l.n?s/

Noun

dullness (usually uncountable, plural dullnesses)

1. The quality of being slow of understanding things; stupidity.
2. The quality of being uninteresting; boring or irksome.
3. Lack of interest or excitement.
4. The lack of visual brilliance; want of sheen.

5. (of an edge) bluntness.
6. The quality of not perceiving or kenning things distinctly.

7. (archaic) Drowsiness.
   • c. 1610-11, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I scene ii^[1]:

     Prospero: […] Thou art inclin'd to sleep. 'Tis a good dulness, / And give it way— I know thou canst not choose.

Translations

English

Etymology

From Late Latin hebet?d?.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?h?b.?.tju?d/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?h?b.?.tu?d/, /?h?b.?.tju?d/

Noun

hebetude (uncountable)

1. Mental lethargy or dullness.
   • 1600, translation attributed to Thomas Nashe, The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles by Tomaso Garzoni, London: Edward Blount, Discourse 6, pp. 32-33,^[1]

     The intemperature of the braine is the cause of al this (as phisitions affirme) which maketh all the officiall, and functiue parts full of heauines and indisposition, and so through this hebetude (to vse their terme) vnapt to keepe in minde any thing.

   • 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, Chapter 8, pp. 354-355,^[2]

     It would be a supposition attended with very little probability, to believe that a complete and full formed spirit existed in every infant; but that it was clogged and impeded in its operations, during the first twenty years of life, by the weakness, or hebetude, of the organs in which it was enclosed.

   • 1904, Joseph Conrad, Nostromo, Chapter 9,^[3]

     Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled violently into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he remained apparently forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in hebetude.

   • 1926, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, New York: Dell, 1962, Chapter 84, p. 471,^[4]

     Incuriousness was the most potent ally of our imposed order; for Eastern government rested not so much on consent or force, as on the common supinity, hebetude, lack-a-daisiness, which gave a minority undue effect.

   • 1985, Oliver Sacks, “The Lost Mariner”, chapter 2 in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Reset 2007 edition), page 33, footnote 2,

     This dwelling on the past and relative hebetude towards the present – this emotional dulling of current feeling and memory – is nothing like Jimmie’s organic amnesia.

Derived terms

• hebetudinous

Related terms

• hebetate

Translations