dryasdust

English

Etymology

From the fictitious character Jonas Dryasdust, created by Sir Walter Scott, from dry as dust.

Noun

dryasdust (plural dryasdusts)

1. A dull, boring or pedantic speaker or writer.
   • 1897: Thomas Carlyle

     […] how can Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic dullard, who knows the meaning of nothing cosmic or noble, nor ever will know?

Adjective

dryasdust (not comparable)

1. Boring and pedantic in speech or writing.
   • 2006: Paula Marantz Cohen in The American Scholar

     […] Casaubon, the dryasdust scholar in Middlemarch, is said to woo his bride with a “frigid rhetoric . . . as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook.”