dullness

See Also: BOREDOM/BORING

1. About as exciting as broccoli —Fred Barnes, “McLaughlin Group” television broadcast, December 29, 1986
2. About as exciting as a ride on a stone camel —Anon
3. As much personality as a paper cup —Raymond Chandler about the city of Los Angeles

   In his essay The Country Behind the Hill, critic Clive James explains that this was intended as a positive simile, reflecting Chandler’s fascination with the city’s seediness.

4. Bland as a Bloody Mary without tabasco —Anon
5. Bland as a martini without a twist of lemon —Anon
6. Bland as hominy grits —Frederick Exley
7. Blunt as ignorance —Samuel Rowley
8. (The place was) dead as a ghost-town cemetery —Douglas Adams

   In his novel, The Fourth Widow, Adams extends the simile as follows: “And nowhere near as pretty.”

9. (The place seemed to be as … ) dead as a Pharaoh —Raymond Chandler
10. Dreary as an empty house —Gustave Flaubert
11. Dreary as an old dishrag —Anon, capsule movie review in New York Times television listings
12. Dreary as a Russian love story —William Diehl
13. Dry as the Congressional Record —James J. Montague
14. (Lies … ) dull and senseless as a stone —Elizabeth Barrett Browning
15. Dull as a jail cell —Ira Wood
16. (A day as) dull as a lead nickel —John Wainwright
17. (A brown macrame wall hanging) dull as dirt —Patricia Henley
18. Dull as pig shit —Ethel Merman, about her friend Benay Venuta’s Jewish society friends
19. Dull as brushing your teeth —Anon
20. Dull as ditch-water —Charles Dickens

    An everyday expression modernized to “Dull as dishwater.”

21. (When he is gone, the world will be) dull as Mars —Lorrie Moore
22. (The road north is … ) dull like a camel plodding through the desert —Anon
23. Dull … like a cookbook written by someone who doesn’t like food —Pat Conroy
24. An eternal sameness, like a blank wall —Robert Silverberg
25. Flat and insipid as a pancake —Anatole France

    Anatole France loved proverbs, and so this extension of familiar wisdom.

26. [About an experience someone is relating] flat as the telling at breakfast of an ecstatic dream —Stella Benson
27. Had the personality of a dried-out fart —Anon
28. Interesting as boiled potatoes —Anon
29. Interesting as staring at a blank wall —Anon
30. Interesting as watching paint dry —Dee Weber
31. Life as humdrum as that of a country curate —W. Somerset Maugham
32. Life … devoid of incident as the longest of Trollope’s novels —O. Henry
33. Life here is as calm as a gold-fish tank with one half-animate inmate: me —Julia O’Faolain
34. Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale —William Shakespeare
35. Looked dreary, like a theater before anybody comes —Mark Twain
36. Looked like she had the IQ of a well-mannered houseplant —A. E. Maxwell
37. Mind … slept and snored like a full dog by the fire —George Garrett
38. Monotonous as a sailor’s chantey —Raymond Chandler
39. Monotonous like water dripping on sandstone —John MacDonald
40. My life is as flat as the table I write on —Gustave Flaubert
41. A new idea made its way into her mind with much difficulty, as if it had to traverse the meshes of a choked sieve —Stefan Zweig
42. Numb as a potato —Daniel Asa Rose
43. Obtuse as an ocelot —Gregory McDonald
44. Personality like a cup of yogurt —Pat Conroy
45. Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within —Honoré de Balzac
46. Seemed dull … as simple as a three-headed treasure-guarding troll —Anon
47. (The people who surrounded him) seemed like white bread, inexcusably bland —Phillip Lopate
48. Shadowy and uninteresting as an event in an outdated and long-unread novel —Gillian Tindall

    The frame of reference for the comparison is a brief, long-ago marriage.

49. There are some things so dull they hypnotize like the pendulum of a clock —Karl Shapiro
50. Tiresome as virtue —Edith Wharton
51. Too dull —no stir, no storm, no life about it … like being part dead and part alive, both at the same time —Mark Twain

    The condition thus described in Twain’s story, Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, is that of running a grocery store.

52. Unconscious as a face of stone —H. W. Hudson
53. (His friends were as) uninteresting as the dead —Rumer Godden
54. Void of life as a block of ice —Patricia Henley