dry-as-dust

[ drahy-uhz-duhst ]

/ ˈdraɪ əzˈdʌst /

dull and boring: a dry-as-dust biography.

QUIZZES

It’d be a real faux pas to miss this quiz on the words from August 3–9, 2020!

Question 1 of 7

What does “vacillate” mean?

1870–75; after Dr. Dryasdust, a fictitious pedant satirized in the prefaces of Sir Walter Scott's novels

He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but for the light they throw upon the living world of his day.
Alone|Norman Douglas
Dry-as-dust letters and specifications, builders' quantities, and so on, to type out.
The Boy with Wings|Berta Ruck
I saw them this morning, a couple of dry-as-dust old fossils—city men, I believe, who only think of house property and dividends.
The Seven Secrets|William Le Queux
And must practise knowledge on a flesh-and-blood love, not cherish it as a dry-as-dust theory.
Twos and Threes|G. B. Stern

Technical and abstruse as his intellectual interests were, he appears to have been anything but a dry-as-dust.
Studies in Medival Life and Literature|Edward Tompkins McLaughlin

dry as dust

Dull, boring, as in This text is dry as dust; it's putting me to sleep. [c. 1500]