Dumb vs Great - What's the difference?
dumb | great |
(label) Unable to speak; lacking power of speech.
* Hooker
(label) Silent; unaccompanied by words.
* Shakespeare
*
* J. C. Shairp
extremely stupid.
(label) Pointless, foolish, lacking intellectual content or value.
Lacking brightness or clearness, as a colour.
* De Foe
To silence.
* 1911 , Lindsay Swift, William Lloyd Garrison , p. 272,
To make stupid.
* 2003 , Angela Calabrese Barton, Teaching Science for Social Justice , p. 124,
To represent as stupid.
* 2004 , Stephen Oppenheimer, The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa , p. 107,
To reduce the intellectual demands of.
* 2002 , Deborah Meier, In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing , p. 126,
Very big, large scale.
:
*{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers), title=(A Cuckoo in the Nest)
, chapter=1 *{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=7 *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-19, author=(Timothy Garton Ash)
, volume=189, issue=6, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= Very good.
:
*, chapter=5
, title= Important.
*(William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
*:He doth object I am too great of birth.
*
*:“[…] We are engaged in a great work, a treatise on our river fortifications, perhaps? But since when did army officers afford the luxury of amanuenses in this simple republic?”
Title referring to an important leader.
:
Superior; admirable; commanding; applied to thoughts, actions, and feelings.
:
Endowed with extraordinary powers; uncommonly gifted; able to accomplish vast results; strong; powerful; mighty; noble.
:
(lb) Pregnant; large with young.
*(Bible), (Psalms) lxxviii. 71
*:the ewes great with young
More than ordinary in degree; very considerable.
:
*(William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
*:We have all / Great' cause to give ' great thanks.
*
*:Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years. A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor;.
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Intimate; familiar.
*(Francis Bacon) (1561-1626)
*:those that are so great with him
Expression of gladness and content about something.
sarcastic inversion thereof.
A person of major significance, accomplishment or acclaim.
A course of academic study devoted to the works of such persons and also known as Literae Humaniores ; the "Greats" name has official status with respect to 's program and is widely used as a colloquialism in reference to similar programs elsewhere.
(music) The main division in a pipe organ, usually the loudest division.
very well (in a very satisfactory manner)
As verbs the difference between dumb and great
is that dumb is to silence while great is .As an adjective dumb
is (label) unable to speak; lacking power of speech.dumb
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) dumb, from (etyl) . In ordinary spoken English, a phrase like "He is dumb" is interpreted as "He is stupid" rather than "He lacks the power of speech". The latter example, however, is the original sense of the word. The senses of stupid'', ''unintellectual'', and ''pointless developed under the influence of the (etyl) word dumm.Adjective
(er)- to unloose the very tongues even of dumb creatures
- dumb show
- This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
- to pierce into the dumb past
- You are so dumb ! You don't even know how to make toast!
- This is dumb ! We're driving in circles! We should have asked for directions an hour ago!
- Brendan had the dumb job of moving boxes from one conveyor belt to another.
- Her stern was painted of a dumb white or dun color.
Synonyms
* (unable to speak) dumbstruck, mute, speechless, wordless * (stupid) feeble-minded, idiotic, moronic, stupid * banal, brainless, dopey, silly, stupid, ridiculous, vulgarDerived terms
* dumb as a box of rocks * dumben * dumbhood * dummy * dumbnessEtymology 2
From (etyl) dumbien, from (etyl) dumbian (more commonly in compound .Verb
(en verb)- The paralysis of the Northern conscience, the dumbing of the Northern voice, were coming to an end.
- I think she's dumbing us down, so we won't be smarter than her.
- Bad-mouthing Neanderthals . . . is symptomatic of a need to exclude and even demonize. . . . I suggest that the unproven dumbing of the Neanderthals is an example of the same cultural preconception.
- The ensuing storm caused the department to lower the bar—amid protests that this was dumbing the test down—so that only 80 percent of urban kids would fail.
Derived terms
* dumbness * dumb blonde * dumb down * dumbocracy * dumb-show * dumb terminal * dummy * play dumbgreat
English
(wikipedia great)Adjective
(er)citation, passage=“[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like // Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer.
citation, passage=‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.
Where Dr Pangloss meets Machiavelli, passage=Hidden behind thickets of acronyms and gorse bushes of detail, a new great game is under way across the globe. Some call it geoeconomics, but it's geopolitics too. The current power play consists of an extraordinary range of countries simultaneously sitting down to negotiate big free trade and investment agreements.}}
The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights,
Usage notes
In simple situations, using modifiers of intensity such as fairly'', ''somewhat , etc. can lead to an awkward construction, with the exception of certain common expressions such as “so great” and “really great”. In particular “very great” is unusually strong as a reaction, and in many cases “great” or its meaning of “very good” will suffice.Synonyms
* See also * See alsoDerived terms
* great big * great chamber * great hall * great room * greatly * greatnessInterjection
(en interjection)- Great! Thanks for the wonderful work.
- Oh, great! I just dumped all 500 sheets of the manuscript all over and now I have to put them back in order.
Noun
(en noun)- Newton and Einstein are two of the greats of the history of science.
- Spencer read Greats at Oxford, taking a starred first.
Adverb
(-)- Those mechanical colored pencils work great because they don't have to be sharpened.
