obtuse
/əbˈtjuːs
/adjective
1Annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand: he wondered if the doctor was being deliberately obtuse...
- This is not because they are obtuse or stupid or misdirected.
- To this end, the Peak began to ask how America could be so obtuse as to not understand the motives behind the attack.
- I wouldn't say these guys were necessarily trying for a hit… they're too obtuse for such a crass act.
1.1Difficult to understand, especially deliberately so: some of the lyrics are a bit obtuse...
- The deadpan humour behind their stone-faced radical posturing and deliberately obtuse lyrics were certainly overlooked by many.
- With some it's all there if you read between the lines, while others are deliberately obtuse to maintain an element of privacy.
- What's more, it turned a difficult, obtuse administrative issue - campaign financing - into an easy-to-grasp, emotionally appealing one.
2(Of an angle) more than 90° and less than 180°: an obtuse angle of 150°...
- I found it, I measured it, and, well, I'm sorry, people, but an obtuse angle of 134 degrees just ain't a corner.
- These students had studied different types of angles e.g., acute, straight and obtuse angles, and discussed the notion of adjacent angles.
- The LRF - 800's performance in the field, especially on smaller objects and those with severely obtuse angles, remains to seen.
3Not sharp-pointed or sharp-edged; blunt: it had strange obtuse teeth...
- The sepals are obtuse to rounded, but never retuse as in some plants of L. racemulosa.
- The base of each valve was rounded in both lines, but was blunt and obtuse in Apex and more tapered in DK142.
- Left anterior auricle shallow, with straight dorsal margin and obtuse, outwardly concave anterior margin lacking a byssal sinus.
Derivatives
obtusely
/ adverb ...- I always answer that obtusely by saying I put myself into Stephen.
- As much as President Stevenson wants to obtusely hold to some notion that tuition hikes don't affect access, they do.
- The latter strand, featuring the inflexible and obtusely by-the-book Captain Francis, peaks in the episode ‘Bad Company’.
obtuseness
/ noun ...- Tracks like ‘Bodies At Rest And In Motion’ can't hide their avant-garde obtuseness, even under skittering drum machines.
- This quote is almost perfect in its obtuseness.
- Change the Climate's web page reveals nothing unique or provocative except extraordinarily distressing obtuseness.
obtusity
- The sheer obtusity and disgustingness of such an ‘arrangement’ between colony and colonial reveals itself.
- In this context the law ought not to give an advantage to obtusity.
Origin
Late Middle English (in sense 3): from Latin obtusus, past participle of obtundere 'beat against' (see obtund).