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

Instead, brown, gray, beige and white are dominant, an achromatic palette whose gloomy drabness is only relieved by the surprisingly wide variety of neutrals the artist employs.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 31, 2023

“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

Set in the everyday drabness of Bucharest or other, even less glamorous Romanian cities, they turn the grievances, frustrations and hopes of ordinary people into deadpan philosophical case studies.

From New York Times • Feb. 26, 2020

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