Word.ws English Dictionary

dryasdust

dryasdust noun: a dull, boring or pedantic speaker or writer.

Noun

dryasdust (plural dryasdusts)

  1. A dull, boring or pedantic speaker or writer.
    • […] how can Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic dullard, who knows the meaning of nothing cosmic or noble, nor ever will know?1858, Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book I, page 23

Adjective

dryasdust (not comparable)

  1. Boring and pedantic in speech or writing.
    • […] Casaubon, the dryasdust scholar in Middlemarch, is said to woo his bride with a “frigid rhetoric . . . as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook.”2006, Paula Marantz Cohen, The American Scholar

Forms of dryasdust

pluraldryasdusts

Origin of dryasdust

From the fictitious character Jonas Dryasdust, created by Sir Walter Scott, from dry as dust.

Questions about dryasdust

What does dryasdust mean?
Dryasdust means a dull, boring or pedantic speaker or writer.
What part of speech is dryasdust?
Dryasdust can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of dryasdust?
The plural of dryasdust is dryasdusts.

Words near dryasdust in the dictionary

  1. dryadic
  2. dryads
  3. dryandra
  4. dryandras
  5. dryas
  6. dryasdust
  7. dryasdusts
  8. dryases
  9. drybag
  10. drybags
  11. drybean

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dryasdust (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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