dullness vs rhetoric

dullness

noun
  • The quality of not perceiving or kenning things distinctly. 

  • The quality of being uninteresting; boring; humorless or irksome. 

  • The quality of being slow of understanding things; stupidity. 

  • Lack of interest or excitement. 

  • The lack of visual brilliance; want of sheen. 

  • bluntness. 

rhetoric

noun
  • The art of using language, especially public speaking, as a means to persuade. 

  • Meaningless language with an exaggerated style intended to impress. 

adj
  • Synonym of rhetorical. 

How often have the words dullness and rhetoric occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )