Meanings
plural dryasdusts
- A dull, boring or pedantic speaker or writer.
[…] how can Dryasdust interpret such things, the dark chaotic dullard, who knows the meaning of nothing cosmic or noble, nor ever will know?
1858, Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book I, page 23
- not comparableBoring and pedantic in speech or writing.
[…] 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.”
2006, Paula Marantz Cohen, The American Scholar
Origin
From the fictitious character Jonas Dryasdust, created by Sir Walter Scott, from dry as dust.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
dryasdust. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dryasdust
“dryasdust.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dryasdust. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “dryasdust,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/dryasdust.
Source: dryasdust on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.