Humdrum

Posted by TheFallen on November 15, 2002

In Reply to: Humdrum posted by Chris on November 15, 2002

: What are the origins of the word humdrum? Anyone got any ideas

The sources I looked at suggested that humdrum comes from the same source as hum (as in to hum a tune). Hum is an imitative onomatopoeic word, and the repetitious humdrum is probably meant to capture an idea of dreary monotonous droning, and so comes to mean boring, uninteresting or commonplace.