Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To blunt or turn, as the edge of a weapon; dull.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To blunt; to turn, as an edge; figuratively, to cause to be obtuse or dull.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To blunt; to turn, as an edge.
  • verb figuratively To cause to be obtuse or dull.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin retundere, retusum; prefix re- re- + tundere to beat.

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Examples

  • Capting bent just one jint of his back very slitely; I retund his stare with equill hottiness.

    The diary of C. Jeames De La Pluche, Esq., with his letters 2006

  • Capting bent just one jint of his back very slitely; I retund his stare with equill hottiness.

    Burlesques 2006

  • George Silvertop, '-- The Capting bent just one jint of his back very slitely; I retund his stare with equill hottiness.

    Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray 1837

  • This one consideration, I say, well weighed and applied, will retund the edge and dint of all the Socinian assaults against this great article; whom I have still observed to assert boldly, when they conclude weakly, and in all their arguments to prove nothing more than this, that the greatest pretenders to, are not always the greatest masters of reason.

    Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions. Vol. III. 1634-1716 1823

  • Farther, the air being variously impregnated, sometimes more and sometimes less, with vapours and exhalations fitted to retund and intercept the rays of light, it follows that the appearance of the horizontal moon hath not always an equal faintness, and by consequence that luminary, though in the very same situation, is at one time judged greater than at another.

    A Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision George Berkeley 1719

  • Both my husband I I files taxes online with turbotax - they promised refund within 8 days - the taxes cost us $50+ each and we did not see our federal retund for 4 weeks.

    unknown title 2009

  • Both my husband I I files taxes online with turbotax - they promised refund within 8 days - the taxes cost us $50+ each and we did not see our federal retund for 4 weeks.

    unknown title 2009

Comments

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  • Poor Ernest obsessively punned -

    A habit he ought to have shunned -

    For rapier wit

    Expended on it

    Will wear out and tend to retund.

    August 27, 2015

  • Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit

    August 28, 2015