obtuseness

[ uhb-toos-nis, -tyoos- ]

noun

1. lack of quickness, alertness, or sensitivity in perception, intellect, or feeling, often arising from conscious or unconscious resistance:

   What I find very tiresome is your willful obtuseness—your refusal to admit facts that are well-known or arguments you have lost.

2. the quality or degree of bluntness in physical form; lack of sharpness or acuteness:

   Platybasia is an abnormal obtuseness of the basal angle of the brain.

3. the fact or quality of being indistinctly felt or perceived, as pain or sound:

   The chief indication of deep-seated, pervasive inflammation seems to be the obtuseness of the pain.

Other Words From

• sub·ob·tuse·ness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of obtuseness¹

First recorded in 1640–50; obtuse ( def ) + -ness ( def )

Example Sentences

In building their ambitiously archetypal saga, Koorzen and Harwood have pushed so far into the realm of the unconscious that their film becomes not only opaque, but obtuse.

From Washington Blade

The multi-step process with baseball writers and then the Veterans Committee is model of obtuseness.

From The Daily Beast

It was also (p. 255) supposed valuable in cases of heaviness and obtuseness of intellect.

From Project Gutenberg

"What you are wearing now is pretty enough for anywhere," declared Sam Brewster, with masculine obtuseness.

From Project Gutenberg

I distrust all intellectual pretension that announces itself by obtuseness of palate!

From Project Gutenberg

"The flippancy of the half-educated is more obstructive to science than the obtuseness of the ignorant," said he.

From Project Gutenberg

She ached to tell her doleful brother what, with true masculine obtuseness, he never in the world would guess.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• absurdity
• apathy
• idiocy
• ignorance
• lunacy
• nonsense
• silliness