How to use humdrum in a sentence

11 example sentences · adjective, noun

Humdrum means lacking variety or excitement; dull; boring. Example: ““Exotic indeed!” he laughed, and almost told her what a humdrum fish it really was, but stopped himself.”

Examples of humdrum by meaning

adjectiveLacking variety or excitement; dull; boring.

“Exotic indeed!” he laughed, and almost told her what a humdrum fish it really was, but stopped himself.1999, Lucy Honig, The Truly Needy And Other Stories, University of Pittsburgh Press, →ISBN, page 89

nounThe quality of lacking variety or excitement.

I think it helped distract us from the dry, humdrum, and heat of the here and now.2010, Clare Vanderpool, Moon Over Manifest

More sentences with humdrum

The more he basked in golden dreams the drabber seemed his humdrum life behind the bank counter.1923 April, Harold Steevens, “The Duplicate Cheque”, in [Herbert Greenhough Smith], editor, The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly…. From the entry drab
How in this humdrum worldkin of ours did mortal men ever come to do this madness?1900, Philip Gengembre Hubert, The Atlantic Monthly. From the entry worldkin
His life took on a quotidian humdrum.2004, Larry Haeg, In Gatsby's Shadow: The Story of Charles Macomb Flandrau. From the entry quotidian
So gentle seemed civilization in the lonely quietness of the coast far from the humdrums of city life.1989, Agustin T. Misola, Natela: The Russian Girl I Love, page 82. From the entry grimless
Not that crotal and white was as humdrum as a simple definition of it as ‘brown and white’ implies.1982, Finlay MacDonald, Crotal & White, page 128. From the entry crottle
Otter, a humdrum and respectable little person, had scabrous intrigues.1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XLIII, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC. From the entry involved
Mr Gilbert says that the initial thinking was humdrum—the firm’s lease was expiring, the business was growing, and he didn’t want to build a new greenfield campus.2025 October 15, The Economist staff, “A billionaire has rebuilt downtown Detroit. But might Dan Gilbert’s project finally run out of…. From the entry greenfield
Instead of shutting up shop, Ghouneim relocated to humdrum Wittenau, a suburb of Berlin, and got some tape artists to decorate the facade of the new building.2019 April 29, Philip Oltermann, “Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail?”, in The Guardian, retrieved 26 Jul 2021. From the entry shut up shop
A breaking up of the year, therefore, into periods with a point d'appui for each, is very necessary to throw an additional stimulus into the humdrum work of the boys.1948, J W Coomber, Making Men, page 176. From the entry point d'appui

Meaning of humdrum

adjective Lacking variety or excitement; dull; boring.
noun The quality of lacking variety or excitement.
noun A stupid fellow.

Full definition of humdrum

Questions about humdrum in a sentence

How do you use humdrum in a sentence?: Humdrum is used as an adjective and noun. For example: ““Exotic indeed!” he laughed, and almost told her what a humdrum fish it really was, but stopped himself.”
What is a short sentence with humdrum?: “His life took on a quotidian humdrum.”
What does humdrum mean?: Humdrum means lacking variety or excitement; dull; boring.

Adapted from Wiktionary: humdrum (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use humdrum in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/humdrum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.