dry-as-dust

[ drahy-uh z-duhst ]

/ ˈdraɪ əzˈdʌst /

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

Origin of dry-as-dust

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