Word.ws English Dictionary

dull as dishwater

dull as dishwater adjective: boring; ordinary; exceedingly dull.

Adjective

dull as dishwater (not comparable)

  1. (simile) Boring; ordinary; exceedingly dull.
    • ‘My blessed Public must have a pretty girl’s face. Romance isn’t romance, adventure is as dull as dishwater...to my Public...unless, every so often, a face to sink a thousand ships, or is it saps? shows up.’1932, Delos W. Lovelace, King Kong, published 1965, page 6
    Synonyms:
    boring as beans

Synonyms of dull as dishwater

Forms of dull as dishwater

alternative formdull as ditchwater

Origin of dull as dishwater

Modified from dull as ditchwater (1700s) in the first half of the 1900s, perhaps through mispronunciation.

Questions about dull as dishwater

What does dull as dishwater mean?
Dull as dishwater means boring; ordinary; exceedingly dull.
What part of speech is dull as dishwater?
Dull as dishwater is an adjective.

Words near dull as dishwater in the dictionary

  1. Dulings
  2. Dulins
  3. Duljo
  4. Duljo-Fatima
  5. dull
  6. dull as dishwater
  7. dull as ditchwater
  8. dull fish
  9. dull fishes
  10. dull-headed
  11. dull-minded

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dull as dishwater (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-dull as dishwater.ogg.

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