Adj. Dull; tame; commonplace; monotonous.
1702. Vanbrugh, False Friend, ii. A very humdrum marriage this.
1705. Ward, Hudibras Redivivus, vol. I., pt. ii., p. 6. Tho’ it is their humdrum fashion To hate all musical precation. [[380]]
1730. Jas. Miller, Humours of Oxford, Act I., p. 7 (2nd Ed.). Your fellows of colleges are a parcel of sad, muzzy, humdrum, lazy, ignorant old caterpillars.
d. 1764. Lloyd, Poems (1774), ‘A Familiar Epistle.’ So frothy, vapid, stale, humdrum.
1765. C. Smart, Fables, xv., line 5. Content in humdrum mood t’adjust Her matters to disperse the dust.
1774. Foote, Cozeners, i., 1. Not one, madam, of the humdrum, drawling, long winded tribe.
1775. Sheridan, Rivals, ii., 1. Yet am I by no means certain that she would take me with the impediment of our friends’ consent, a regular humdrum wedding, and the reversion of a good fortune on my side.
d. 1823. Bloomfield, Poems, ‘Richard and Kate’ (1825), p. 89. Come, Goody, stop your humdrum wheel.
1825. Harriet Wilson, Memoirs, iii., 237. You are, in fact, too constant for Paris. One has enough of all that hum-drum stuff in England.