drabness

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The strict realism runs the risk of drabness; the novel’s title, for instance, is so forgettable that I have had to look it up three times in the writing of this review.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 26, 2025

“With her higher-than-high hemlines, colorful tights and masculine tailored trousers, she helped wipe out British postwar drabness and create a bold new attitude to dressing.”

From Washington Post • Apr. 13, 2023

To stay sane, she releases her pent-up frustration at her gigs, where her furious guitar playing, powerful vocals and introspective songwriting torch the everyday drabness of her life with a Dionysian flame.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 19, 2023

The street’s 20 buildings, including Song Yang’s, are mostly three- and four-story structures from the 1980s and ’90s that evoke a utilitarian, Soviet-bloc drabness.

From New York Times • Oct. 11, 2018

And the many fountains with water-spouting nymphs and Neptunes kill the drabness of business, and freshen modern civilization so that it ceases to know itself as such.

From Europe—Whither Bound? Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 by Graham, Stephen