[f. LULL v.]
1. Something that lulls; spec. a lulling sound, etc.
1719. Young, Revenge, V. ii. Yonder lull Of falling waters tempted me to rest.
1820. Keats, Isabella, v. Sweet Isabella’s untouch’d cheek … Fell thin as a young mother’s, who doth seek By every lull to cool her infant’s pain.
† b. Soothing drink, ‘nepenthe.’ Obs.
1659. Lond. Chanticleers, ix. 20. Mine Host Welcom has a Cup of blessed Lull.
2. A lulled or stupefied condition.
1822–56. De Quincey, Confessions (1862), 238. I fleeted back into the same opium lull.
1902. Blackw. Mag., April, 553/1, I sat listening in a kind of lull of terror and disgust.
3. A brief period of intermission or quiescence in a storm. Also fig.
1815. Earl Dudley, Lett., 15 April (1840), 93. What … so many wiser people mistook for a calm, turns out to be only a lull.
1851. Gallenga, Italy, ii. 90. The lull that occurred in Lombardy … was sheer dread and horror of French interference.
1860. Motley, Netherl. (1868), I. iii. 69. There was a lull on the surface of affairs.
1901. Edin. Rev., Jan., 196. During Cicero’s absence in Cilicia there seemed for a time a lull in the storm.
