Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being obtuse, in any sense.

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

  • noun State or quality of being obtuse.

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

  • noun Something that is obtuse

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality of being slow to understand
  • noun the quality of lacking a sharp edge or point

Etymologies

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Examples

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  • I hate the calling of meetings to order. I hate the nomination of officers, always fearing lest I should be appointed Secretary. I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late. I hate being officially and necessarily in the presence of men most of whom, either from excessive zeal in the good cause or from constitutional obtuseness, are incapable of being bored, which state is to me the most exhausting of all conditions, absorbing more of my life than kind of active exertion I am capable of performing.

    --Oliver Wendell Holmes, 24 October 1862, in letter to Reverend James Freeman Clarke.

    March 10, 2008

  • "Though today people talk more frequently about "population control" in view of the catastrophic effects of the demographic phenomenon that I have compared to cancer, this still does not address the essential issue, since a differentiated and qualitative criterion does not come into play at all. But those who oppose population control on the basis of traditionalist and pseudomoralistic ideas, which nowadays amounts to mere prejudices, are guilty of even graters obtuseness. If what really matters is the greatness and the might of a stock, it is useless to be concerned about the material quality of fatherhood unless an equal concern for its spiritual dimension is present as well in the sense of superior interests, of the correct relationship between the sexes, and above all, of what is really meant by virility - of what it still signifies on a plane that is not merely naturalistic"

    - Julius Evola in "The Revolt against the Modern World"

    March 23, 2009