different between dullness vs listlessness

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 listless +? -ness.

Noun

listlessness (countable and uncountable, plural listlessnesses)

1. The state of being listless; apathetic indifference; lethargy.
   • 1749, John Cleland, Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Letter the First,^[1]

     But every thing must have an end. A motion made by this angelic youth, in the listlessness of going off sleep, replac'd his shirt and the bed-cloaths in a posture that shut up that treasure from longer view.

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 35,^[2]

     […] lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.

Translations