toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

monotonous
in a sentence

show 186 more with this conextual meaning
  • I remember the monotony. Digging foxholes. Slapping mosquitoes. The sun and the heat and the endless paddies.   (source)
    monotony = lack of variety
  • Adam played me snippets of bands he liked, a Swedish pop trio that sounded monotonous but then some Icelandic art band that was quite beautiful.   (source)
    monotonous = lacking in variety
  • The only sound is the monotonous hum of the heater on the ceiling.   (source)
  • From far back in the flinty hills, the monotonous call of a hoot owl floated down in the silent night.   (source)
  • We could hear the wheels churning out that monotonous rhythm of a train traveling through the night.   (source)
  • I knew my family would be waiting to share news of the day. The very monotony I had lately disdained cried out to me: I am essential. Without me you will wither,   (source)
    monotony = lack of variety (consistent pattern)
  • That a carnival is a real good idea. Something to break the monotony.   (source)
    monotony = lack of variety
  • One thing that helped to break the monotony of being locked in by the storm was the arrival of Leon and Eugene.   (source)
  • He started talking in this very monotonous voice,   (source)
    monotonous = boring
  • Granpa said that when things had got monotonous for ol' Slick he had gone so far as to come and set in the edge of the cabin clearing, trying to get Granpa and the hounds to trail him.   (source)
    monotonous = boring (due to a lack of variety)
  • She began to play it with her fingers - a steady, monotonous thrumming that you didn't notice after a few minutes.   (source)
    monotonous = lacking in variety
  • ...monotonously falls the rain.   (source)
    monotonously = without variation
  • He got so frantic that he began to thrash from side to side like someone very sick with a high fever who can only monotonously repeat a motion or a word.   (source)
    monotonously = without variety
  • It was as though, so long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived,   (source)
    monotonous = dull (lacking variety)
  • So he continued monotonously to chew tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.   (source)
    monotonously = with a lack of variety
  • Akela never raised his head from his paws, but went on with the monotonous cry: "Look well!"   (source)
    monotonous = lacking in variety
  • to while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams   (source)
    monotony = lack of variety
  • Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang;   (source)
    monotonous = lacking in variety
  • The song of the locomotive was monotonous as they traveled north, and the hours seemed like Mama's never-ending ball of thread unwinding in front of them.†   (source)
  • The architecture is too monotonous.†   (source)
  • If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy.†   (source)
  • I found a story about a boy and his dog lost in a cave and began reading while Miss Crocker's voice droned on monotonously.†   (source)
  • He has no talent for monotony.†   (source)
  • The work was monotonous but pleasant.†   (source)
  • For me, the most intolerable aspects are the spiritual monotony and desiccation.†   (source)
  • The scenery and motion were so monotonous that Salva might have slept, except he was afraid that if he did, he might fall over the side.†   (source)
  • The same blinding greenness throughout, the same ridge, the same incline from ridge to water, the same break in the monotony: a scraggly tree here and there.†   (source)
  • It was not until their taxi had settled into a monotonous northbound hum on Rue de Clichy that Langdon felt they'd actually escaped.†   (source)
  • "Winky talked my father into it," said Crouch, still in the same monotonous voice.†   (source)
  • Charles Wallace's strange, monotonous voice ground against her ears.†   (source)
  • Arnold picked up the phone and heard a steady monotonous hiss.†   (source)
  • Having the occasional chat with me helped break the monotony of their days.†   (source)
  • But if I look past the buzzing machine monotonously unzipping the crusted soil, at the field itself and the fields around it, I remember that the seemingly stationary fields are always flowing toward one farmer and away from another.†   (source)
  • She can hear the trains stop, then resume their monotonous drone.†   (source)
  • You rotate the duties to help break up the monotony.†   (source)
  • That night I made for the first time the kind of journey which later became the monotonous routine of my life: traveling through an unknown countryside from one unknown settlement to another.†   (source)
  • Just trying to break the monotony of all this waiting.†   (source)
  • Matthew's voice was harsh and monotonous.†   (source)
  • I sat in the back of the hatchback on the drive home—and that is how I thought of it: home—and fell asleep to the highway's monotonous lullaby. forty-four days before†   (source)
  • This was flat country with only a few barely noticeable rolling hills to break the monotony.†   (source)
  • Aspen and I were rarities, a Five and Six pulled out of our monotonous lives and placed in the palace.†   (source)
  • I think they take the occasional potshot to relieve the monotony.†   (source)
  • Last week there was a brief interruption in our monotonous routine.†   (source)
  • I was confused by the pre-printed cards I kept finding all over the house: grids pencilled in with row after monotonous row of figures.†   (source)
  • It was still quarter of ten before he was actually on the road, the windshield wipers clicking and the chains clinking with tuneless monotony on the Buick's big wheels.†   (source)
  • The day was a monotonous trek of endless plodding.†   (source)
  • Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.†   (source)
  • There had been no forests to fell, no hills to deal with, and no mountains to break the flat monotony of cornfields, bean-fields, cornfields, wheatfields, cornfields, rice paddies, and cornfields.†   (source)
  • yield from this mill was monotonously consistent going all the way back to 1960.†   (source)
  • Olmsted dismissed the inland sites out of hand as being flat and monotonous and too far from the lake.†   (source)
  • It was monotonous work.†   (source)
  • There is a great deal of monotonous repetition.†   (source)
  • They complained that the work was boring and monotonous, but enjoyed earning money, getting away from school and parents, hanging out with friends at work, and goofing off as much as possible.†   (source)
  • This was an ancient dirge all the more impressive for its resolute monotony.†   (source)
  • They stood by lamp-posts, by the walls of buildings and in the road, heads raised, monotonously whimpering that they were hungry.†   (source)
  • And though it was a welcome break from the monotony of lecture, this most recent activity had a sinister element too.†   (source)
  • He notes the handful of tunnel dwellers but keeps his thoughts to himself On Glendale Boulevard, the gray monotony of downtown disappears behind us and the San Gabriel Mountains climb into the clouds up ahead.†   (source)
  • Most of the driving would be on the interstate highways, which makes driving monotonous.†   (source)
  • The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.†   (source)
  • They obviously desire something mystical, something different to break the dreary monotony of everyday life.†   (source)
  • In a monotonous tone he warned the listeners that "this day might be your last," and the best insurance against dying a sinner was to "make yourself right with God" so that on the fateful day He would say, "Thou art my good and faithful servant with whom I am well pleased."†   (source)
  • The same families married the same families until relationships were hopelessly entangled and the members of the community looked monotonously alike.†   (source)
  • He hated the light bulb's monotonous surveillance; it disturbed his sleep and, more explicitly, endangered the success of a private project-escape.†   (source)
  • The monotony of the dirty whitewashed walls of the room was broken only by two small windows with iron bars on them, and by a single picture of a man, a Kurd with high cheekbones, wearing a fuzzy Russian-style hat.†   (source)
  • There's thousands of people, Bessie now sang, ain't got no place to go, and for the first time Rufus began to hear, in the severely understated monotony of this blues, something which spoke to his troubled mind.†   (source)
  • Sometimes, to break the monotony, one would present a woven rabbit-fur hat or mittens to the other.†   (source)
  • The sky became quite gray and, along with it, the whole countryside seemed to lose its color and assume the same monotonous tone.†   (source)
  • Sometimes the monotony of bingo and sing-alongs and ancient dusty people parked in the hallway in wheelchairs makes me long for death.†   (source)
  • They listened, but beyond the rustle of the leaves there came from the open down outside no sound except the monotonous tremolo of a grasshopper warbler, far off in the grass.†   (source)
  • Now, though, I couldn't believe that there had been a time when this kind of monotony and silence, this most narrow of existences, had been preferable.†   (source)
  • First it was a hymn, all abrupt, odd, minor cadences and monotonous refrain.†   (source)
  • And while the urgencies of the pantry grew greater, Fernanda's indignation also grew, until her eventual protests, her infrequent outbursts came forth in an uncontained, unchained torrent that begin one morning like the monotonous drone of a guitar and as the day advanced rose in pitch, richer and more splendid.†   (source)
  • Being an A&O that February—a leap year, no less—was a strange combination of confusion and monotony.†   (source)
  • They wanted to witness the Red October's first operational cruise, and besides, sailors will do almost anything to break the monotony of their duties.†   (source)
  • Walking along all day beside a cow herd was already proving monotonous-- any steady work had always struck him as monotonous.†   (source)
  • The Nadia, where foreign businessmen often ate seven evenings a week while they were in Islamabad, offered theme nights to break up the monotony.†   (source)
  • The teacher is very monotonous and mundane.†   (source)
  • One of Franklin's buddies, Tex Stanton, remembers boot camp as "weeks of monotonous training, learning how to march, how to follow orders, how to shoot a rifle, how to be a real Marine."†   (source)
  • She was tired of struggling against the elements with nothing to break the monotony but watching Blanca grow.†   (source)
  • The engines droned on monotonously like a fat, lazy fly.†   (source)
  • He would whisper impromptu fairy tales about her, or gibberish, words he repeated monotonously, words soothing or comical, which turned into vague visions lulling her through the first dreams of the night.†   (source)
  • There could be months ahead of cheese sandwiches and homemade coffee in a flask, with nothing to relieve the monotony.†   (source)
  • The liver's smooth and shiny outer surface is monotonous and unexciting, and apart from a median furrow dividing it into a large right lobe and a smaller left, it has no visible cleavage planes.†   (source)
  • Jake had also explained that depositions drag on for days because the lawyers are being paid by the hour, or at least the ones who are asking the banal and monotonous questions.†   (source)
  • Workers toiled day and night in behemoth drones that swallowed their souls and their children; not necessarily like Arturo, but in the way they absorbed each generation without offering any hope from their monotonous cycle of birth, grueling labor and then death.†   (source)
  • THE next morning it rained and I reached the district before the others arrived and stood looking through the window of my office, past the jutting wall of a building, and on beyond the monotonous pattern of its bricks and mortar I saw a row of trees rising tall and graceful in the rain.†   (source)
  • They sang the song of summer's ending, a sad, monotonous song.†   (source)
  • No part of the address was particularly distinguished or memorable and the delivery was monotonous throughout.†   (source)
  • Waves approached and receded as monotonously as connecting rods pumping back and forth in an engine.†   (source)
  • The dark, rough rocks and the dusty plains covered in scrub flew by with monotonous uniformity.†   (source)
  • Not until I had reached the bank and was making my homeward way along the top of it did the monotonous Sunday precepts join up with reality.†   (source)
  • His voice was precise and monotonous; it connoted safety.†   (source)
  • Some might have found the continuous spread of sun-ripened grain waving, acre after acre, monotonous.†   (source)
  • A few stars were twinkling, scattered and faint overhead, when Rasmussen finally broke the monotonous scrape and shuffle of their feet.†   (source)
  • As we listened to the testimony of the OG, I placed my right hand on Pig's shoulder and squeezed it, as we endured the flat, monotonous testimony, which damaged Pig grievously with its assuredness and its utter simplicity.†   (source)
  • The only difference is that the officers don't wear their ranks on their uniforms: they write them after their names and announce them in the degree to which their speech is pompous, mellifluous, and monotonous.†   (source)
  • Nearby someone was cursing the gods in a heavy, monotonous voice.†   (source)
  • He wanders through the stores of the U-shaped, outdoor mall admiring the piles of merchandise in the windows—sweaters, shirts, gloves, scarves, jewelry, sports equipment, shoes—the monotonous beauty of wealth.†   (source)
  • His visits are uplifting to Booth and Herold, a welcome break from the monotony of sitting still for hours and hours out in the open.†   (source)
  • Speak quietly, fool," Dendybar the Mottled, a frail-looking man tucked defensively within the alleyway's shadows demanded in the same monotonous voice that he always used.†   (source)
  • In a word, everyone had taken it upon himself to expose the ignorance of those who were junior to him, and the quarrels proceeded as in some monotonous soap opera.†   (source)
  • Holding it to my ear, a monotonous beeping immediately hit my eardrums.†   (source)
  • Like a slot machine, fed habitually, mindlessly, monotonously, so that you're almost shocked when the jackpot falls in your lap.†   (source)
  • The moonlight was constantly intercepted by the drifting, low-flying clouds and he kept straining his eyes, scanning the field of tall grass, looking for a break in the monotonous pattern, for bent reeds moving towards the base of the hill, towards him.†   (source)
  • When the ice melted, sandy riverbeds were deposited on the land below, where they now provide almost the sole visual relief in the bleak monotony of the tundra plains.†   (source)
  • This "imaginary evil"—again to quote Simone Weil—"is romantic and varied, while real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring."†   (source)
  • Half-way through the afternoon, as they were crossing a monotonous belt of scrub, there came a diversion: as welcome as it was unexpected.†   (source)
  • It was a triumph of architectural monotony, illuminated at night only by dim little globes of light that came from gas street lamps.†   (source)
  • Jenkins started his monotonous chant again.†   (source)
  • He walked on out of the woodlot, and his head hung down so that his chin rested on his chest, and the rise and fall of his hip when his wooden leg struck the ground was monotonous.†   (source)
  • The night was hot and there was a low, monotonous whistling of some bird out in the bushes grown up around the dilapidated barn, east of the house and trailer.†   (source)
  • The novelty will do much to relieve the monotony.†   (source)
  • "God damm it," the old man said in a slow monotonous certain tone as if he were saying it to the beating of his heart.†   (source)
  • On either side, bare fields; in the distance, dark monotonous hills were mingling with the gathering darkness.†   (source)
  • Through the open classroom windows came the distant droning of the town, as monotonous as a beehive, and the shrieks of children playing in the yard.†   (source)
  • Not heavy now but monotonous, dripping onto us, splashing on the stones.†   (source)
  • She looks like funny furniture-an unornamented stair post in one of these little houses, with her small monotonous round stupid head-or sometimes like a woodcut of a Bavarian witch, forefinger pointing, with scratches in the air all around her.†   (source)
  • "Speaking of monotony…" he continued smoothly.†   (source)
  • Someone was beating a drum; the monotonous tom-tom noise sounded the end of the day.†   (source)
  • The wind cried and whisked in the brush, and the family went on monotonously, hour after hour.   (source)
    monotonously = boringly (without variety)
  • He said woodenly, "If I was alone I could live so easy." His voice was monotonous, had no emphasis. "I could get a job an' not have no mess."   (source)
    monotonous = lacking in variety of tone and rhythm
  • Nothing happens—only the monotonous cry: "Mind—wire,"—our knees bend—we are again half asleep.   (source)
    monotonous = without variation
  • All one hears is the drummers practising; they have installed themselves somewhere and practise brokenly, dully, monotonously.   (source)
  • Monotonously the lorries sway,   (source)
  • ...monotonously come the calls,   (source)
  • He would most likely be grateful for a break in the monotony.†   (source)
  • A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely.†   (source)
  • I want anything that breaks the monotony, subverts the perceived respectable order of things.†   (source)
  • He kept humming a soft, monotonous little tune.†   (source)
  • For a long time there was no sound except his monotonous lapping and slurping.†   (source)
  • The demolition work was very monotonous.†   (source)
  • I could hear their blurred voices droning monotonously through the window.†   (source)
  • Things settled back into their accustomed, monotonous order.†   (source)
  • Suddenly I grew conscious of a break in that monotonous tone and I looked up.†   (source)
  • Most offworiders find the gravity a pain and the scenery monotonous.†   (source)
  • I heard a noise, faint, monotonous, white.†   (source)
  • The dealers in gold and currency were calling out monotonously, 'Gold, buy gold.†   (source)
  • Many hours spent blowing in and out monotonously on a toy harmonica, in and out, in and out.†   (source)
  • At the beginning of the year an entirely unexpected event disturbed the monotony of my days.†   (source)
  • The top of the hill was almost treeless, only solitary evergreens to break the gray monotony.†   (source)
  • Truthfully, I was looking forward to getting back to the normal monotony of shuffling papers.†   (source)
  • The heart machine beeped steadily, soothing in its monotony.†   (source)
  • But December came and went, a monotony of gray, of muted Christmas carols coming from downstairs.†   (source)
  • Maybe because there are fewer distracting features to break up the wide monotony of hill and plane.†   (source)
  • Carrie's steady, monotonous weeping went on and on.†   (source)
  • Mile after mile after mile after mile, and everything became graver and more monotonous.†   (source)
  • As he ran, he listened to the monotonous pattern of his breathing and to his light, quick footsteps.†   (source)
  • With all of this combined, the monotony hit lethal levels.†   (source)
  • The highs and lows, the rush, the monotony.†   (source)
  • Its monotony bred happiness, not boredom.†   (source)
  • When that grew monotonous he wrote, 'Irving Washington.'†   (source)
  • Joe listened to the monotonous thump of the windshield wipers.†   (source)
  • The desert was, if anything, more monotonous and dead than before.†   (source)
  • But monotony doesn't make for painlessness.†   (source)
  • Fascinating — but, after a time, monotonous.†   (source)
  • It appeared one afternoon, a mere sliver of black that broke the monotony of the gray, flat horizon.†   (source)
  • Long, monotonous days punctuated by moments of terror.†   (source)
  • Major Major went back to Washington Irving when John Milton grew monotonous.†   (source)
  • The work was monotonous, and as a result, Eragon soon lost track of the time.†   (source)
  • Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth.†   (source)
  • Like Washington Irving, he could be reversed with good effect whenever he grew monotonous.†   (source)
  • Squinting, Eragon swept his gaze back and forth, but the fog seemed as monotonous as ever.†   (source)
  • To break the monotony he invented games.†   (source)
  • If that was what the M. I. did to break the monotony, then that was what I did.†   (source)
  • The ceaseless, monotonous noise made her feel sick and giddy.†   (source)
  • A tune of utter monotony filled the room with agonizing, unforgettable banality.†   (source)
  • But she kept talking in the candlelight, in this flat monotonous voice now, as in a trance.†   (source)
  • But these monotonous, endless repetitions made his head go around.†   (source)
  • He remembered finding one of Joan's bras under a sofa cushion earlier in the day, and she had been gone a full three months, showed you what kind of a job the cleaning service did; he remembered hearing New York traffic, and, faintly, the monotonous tolling of a church bell calling the faithful to mass.†   (source)
  • The viewers wanted to see the executions, yes. but after a while these could get monotonous, so one last fighting chance had to be added in, or else an element of surprise.†   (source)
  • It's a view he does not admire — it is so relentlessly horizontal — but visual monotony can sometimes be conducive to thought.†   (source)
  • Of all the dreary monotonous sermons!†   (source)
  • Their father had let the leaves smolder all that afternoon, drinking beer on the porch and dropping the empty Black Label cans into his wife's plastic floorbucket while his two older sons flanked him and little Jacky sat on the steps at his feet, playing with his Bolo Bouncer and singing monotonously over and over: "Your cheating heart … will make you weep … your cheating heart … is gonna tell on you.†   (source)
  • "But Lex was screaming, "He left us, he left us!" in a steady, monotonous wail, and there was nothing for Tim to do but climb out of the back door, into the slashing rain, and shut the door for her.†   (source)
  • The final vestiges of panic from the night before had been drained by the monotony of breaking trail and he felt light-headed and irritable and his stomach gnawed at him.†   (source)
  • She had cool green eyes and jet hair, a quick smile, and was the type of girl Jem fell for with monotonous regularity.†   (source)
  • Yours, Anne FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 1944 Dearest Kitty, This morning I was wondering whether you ever felt like a cow, having to chew my stale news over and over again until you're so fed up with the monotonous fare that you yawn and secretly wish Anne would dig up something new.†   (source)
  • For the rest of that day and into the night, we went up and down, up and down, up and down, until terror became monotonous and was replaced by numbness and a complete giving-up.†   (source)
  • He listened to the monotonous snarl of the riding lawnmower, saw her shadow, and, as so often happened when he thought of how weird Annie was getting, his mind recalled the image of the axe rising, then falling; the image of her horrid impassive deadly face splattered with his blood.†   (source)
  • Beautiful effects were scarcely to be expected in buildings so enormous and so cheaply constructed; the level of monotony of ground surfaces in Chicago made effective grouping practically impossible; the time for preparation and construction was too short: these and other criticisms indicated a general feeling of disparagement.†   (source)
  • There is talk of a new Sewing Machine for use in the home, which would do exceedingly well if it might be cheaply produced; for every woman would wish to own such an item, which would save many hours of monotonous toil and unceasing drudgery, and would also be of great assistance to the poor seamstresses.†   (source)
  • What's important is the relevance of such a discovery to all the valleys of this world, and all the dull, dreary jobs and monotonous years that await all of us in them.†   (source)
  • How could he exist in this clean, dry, monotonous, ordinary room, gobbling caramel soycorn and zucchini cheese puffs and addling his brain on spirituous liquors and brooding on the total fiasco that was his personal life, while the entire human race was kakking out?†   (source)
  • But he was wrong; the only teacher present when they entered was Professor Binns, floating an inch or so above his chair as usual and preparing to continue his monotonous drone on giant wars.†   (source)
  • But it became too monotonous; and as he had a love of variety, he'd enlisted again for a soldier, with the Glengarry Light Infantry, which had got such a bad reputation among the farmers, as I knew from Mary Whitney, having burnt a good many farmhouses during the Rebellion, and turned women and children out into the snow, and done worse to them besides, that was never printed in the papers.†   (source)
  • I get up to pee, go back to bed, lie twisting in the damp sheets, listening to the monotonous whirring of the fan.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)