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obtuse
in a sentence

show 76 more with this conextual meaning
  • His obtuseness frustrated me.†   (source)
  • Again there was that deliberate obtuseness in me.†   (source)
  • They were obtuse; their morale was good.†   (source)
  • He imagines how obtuse and disconnected Cedric must feel.†   (source)
  • If so, that obtuseness was rooted in an absolute: it was next to impossible to tap a phone on short notice in a relatively small hotel without being detected.†   (source)
  • Nor was he ever so obtuse about French sensibilities and the importance of maintaining good relations with France as his detractors would later charge.†   (source)
  • "I'm not being obtuse," he said as he crossed his arms over his chest, "but you're acute girl."†   (source)
  • It is the systematic operation, which always and obtusely succeeds, the well-planned response to life's uncertainties and complications.†   (source)
  • And Mom could be so insensitive, so clueless and obtuse.†   (source)
  • He was so obtuse he did not realize the implied insult in his astonishment that a black man could do anything but say "yes, sir" and mumble four-letter words.†   (source)
  • Forgive me for being so obtuse, but what is your new job?†   (source)
  • As for those who could say, and with a fair measure of accuracy, "1963," or even "1937"--a thing he certainly could not do himself--he felt a kind of moral outrage he could barely hide from even the most obtuse observer.†   (source)
  • And when, after Leamas had arrived in our country and Fiedler embarked on his own interrogation, no further reports were forthcoming, do you suppose Comrade Mundt was then so obtuse that he did not know what Fiedler was hatching?†   (source)
  • To the moderates, whose obtuseness made the doctor indignant, he seemed dangerous; to those whose politics were advanced, not Red enough.†   (source)
  • In many ways Boyce is remarkably obtuse and simple-minded.†   (source)
  • An obtuse vague grimace of inhuman, unconquerable suffering never left his face.†   (source)
  • And then that clear-eyed, calm-faced boy would shine forth from Red's sags and wrinkles, from his crumpled eyelids and hollowed cheeks and the two deep crevices bracketing his mouth and just his general obtuseness, his stubbornness, his infuriating belief that simple cold logic could solve all of life's problems, and she would feel unspeakably lucky to have ended up with him.†   (source)
  • Infrequent outings-to church, mostly, and one small family gathering at his grandmother's house-only ended up making him feel more obtuse, as people he'd sometimes known his whole life asked off-target, generally uninformed questions about his new life in Providence.†   (source)
  • Had he and Bernardine been so obtuse as to think the Deuxième or Peter Holland's Paris station of the CIA had overlooked tapping into his Pont-Royal telephone or bribed or enlisted the various relays of operators on the hotel's switchboard?†   (source)
  • There, at least, everyone stumbles along on the same uncertain footing of como estas and bastante biens and he doesn't feel as conspicuous or obtuse or ill prepared as he does in education class … and almost everywhere else he goes at Brown.†   (source)
  • I had never encountered such obtuseness in a first-class hotel, and I told them so, but this only increased their inhospitality.†   (source)
  • If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.†   (source)
  • And on this aspect you seem singularly obtuse.†   (source)
  • Now, when he was on fire with his Cause, Arthur's justice seemed bourgeois and obtuse beside him.†   (source)
  • Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse.†   (source)
  • "Why, because she couldn't get any one else, of course," said "Pap" Rheinhart, impatient at this obtuseness.†   (source)
  • People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well, are often in these difficulties.†   (source)
  • My obtuseness provoked him into a contemptuous "Pshaw!"†   (source)
  • Castleton for once proved that he was not absolutely obtuse, and helped along the idea.†   (source)
  • As soon as he had taken up a business, his obtuseness vanished.†   (source)
  • Henry's obtuseness had saved her as well as himself.†   (source)
  • The other corner was disproportionately obtuse.†   (source)
  • I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute—two, consequently, obtuse.†   (source)
  • "Poh, poh, you are obtuse!" said Mr. Smooth-it-away, with a hearty laugh.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Honeychurch had been civil, but obtuse in essentials, while as for Freddy--"He is only a boy," he reflected.†   (source)
  • Obtuse Frau Stohr went on and on in this way with ghastly thoroughness until the brief, if ample meal was over.†   (source)
  • They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive;…†   (source)
  • She liked their elegance, their lightness, their lack of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency.†   (source)
  • The truth about his remarkable fabrications, however, had not become known to Castleton, solely because of the Englishman's obtuseness.†   (source)
  • For there was one quality in Henry for which she was never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his obtuseness.†   (source)
  • To submit himself to the criticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to policemen and its fine arts to impresarios?†   (source)
  • a bit obtuse†   (source)
  • Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came.†   (source)
  • He remembered with what a callous selfishness his uncle had treated her, how obtuse he had been to her humble, devoted love.†   (source)
  • She had always felt that her sensibility in this direction made up for certain obtusenesses of feeling of which she was less proud; and during the last three months she had indulged it passionately.†   (source)
  • With a stubborn, obtuse look on her face, she uttered the grotesque term "Blue Henry" without the least hesitancy, and Hans Castorp felt an urge both to laugh and to shudder as she said it.†   (source)
  • It was a faith like any other, only worse and more obtuse than all the rest; and the word "science" itself was the expression of the most stupid son of realism, which did not blush at taking at face value the dubious reflections that objects left on the human mind and seeing them as the basis for the most dismal and vapid dogma anyone ever foisted on humanity.†   (source)
  • Henry's inner life had long laid open to her—his intellectual confusion, his obtuseness to personal influence, his strong but furtive passions.†   (source)
  • Nor is obtuseness necessarily harmless.†   (source)
  • Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions.†   (source)
  • Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggie's palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her.†   (source)
  • When the elder Osborne gave what he called "a hint," there was no possibility for the most obtuse to mistake his meaning.†   (source)
  • The notes flew forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things—flapping and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds, spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.†   (source)
  • "What became of the poor fellow?" asked Cap, scarcely knowing how to take the other's manner, which was so dry, while it was so simple, that a less obtuse subject than the old sailor might well have suspected its sincerity.†   (source)
  • Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers!†   (source)
  • Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without subduing a certain something which an obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for asperity.†   (source)
  • Every projection in each was worn down to obtuseness, partly by weather, more by friction from generations of loungers, whose toes and heels had from year to year made restless movements against these parapets, as they had stood there meditating on the aspect of affairs.†   (source)
  • Perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the master air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which in a painting is all the obtuse can see,) gave but the full spirit of his original for my individual contemplation and chagrin.†   (source)
  • Suppressing the angry sensation, with instinctive quickness, she answered with a readiness and truth, that caused her sister to draw near to listen, though the obtuse intellect of the latter was far from comprehending the workings of a heart as treacherous, as uncertain, and as impetuous in its feelings, as that of the spoiled and flattered beauty.†   (source)
  • But though Rakitin was very sensitive about everything that concerned himself, he was very obtuse as regards the feelings and sensations of others—partly from his youth and inexperience, partly from his intense egoism.†   (source)
  • His obtuseness on the great Testimonial question was not calculated to awaken admiration in the paternal breast, but had rather a tendency to give offence in that sensitive quarter, and to be regarded as a positive shortcoming in point of gentlemanly feeling.†   (source)
  • Marie never had possessed much capability of affection, or much sensibility, and the little that she had, had been merged into a most intense and unconscious selfishness; a selfishness the more hopeless, from its quiet obtuseness, its utter ignorance of any claims but her own.†   (source)
  • This was so very aggravating—the more especially as I found myself making no way against his surly obtuseness—that I said, disregarding Herbert's efforts to check me,— "Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you what passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money."†   (source)
  • At the moment when she makes her entrance into this history which we are relating, she was an antique virtue, an incombustible prude, with one of the sharpest noses, and one of the most obtuse minds that it is possible to see.†   (source)
  • Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving the feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's feelings were, the latter would probably have left him, but the man's animated obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed Pierre.†   (source)
  • A heavy club of wood, or a broad bar of iron--a chair--any large, heavy, and obtuse weapon would have produced such results, if wielded by the hands of a very powerful man.†   (source)
  • Lying in it, as in a grave or sarcophagus, with a hurried drapery of sheet and blanket thrown across it, was the body of a heavily-made man, with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, common features.†   (source)
  • Her senses had been captivated by his personal advantages, and her moral communications with him had never been sufficiently intimate to counteract an effect that must have been otherwise lessened, even with one whose mind was as obtuse as her own.†   (source)
  • The obtuse instrument was clearly the stone pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had fallen from the window which looked in upon the bed.†   (source)
  • Monsieur Dumas, and his worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne, have pronounced that they were inflicted by some obtuse instrument; and so far these gentlemen are very correct.†   (source)
  • Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself," struck Hutter more perceptibly than the others, and, though too obscure for one of his blunted feelings and obtuse mind either to feel or to comprehend in their fullest extent, they had a directness of application to his own state that caused him to wince under them.†   (source)
  • But mind what I now tell you, gal, and pretend not to know it," continued this being, who was so obtuse on a point on which men are usually quick enough to make discoveries, and so acute in matters that would baffle the observation of much the greater portion of mankind, "I see how it is, with them vagabonds.†   (source)
  • It was as though his eyes were holding their breath, while his mother looked at him ... clairvoyant yet obtuse.†   (source)
  • Of a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted for the superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic piston and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of a constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental female organism, passive but not obtuse.†   (source)
  • To this Sancho made answer, "Indeed those gentlemen the judges that send you to me might have spared themselves the trouble, for I have more of the obtuse than the acute in me; but repeat the case over again, so that I may understand it, and then perhaps I may be able to hit the point."†   (source)
  • …ripe fruit, thou drop Into thy mother's lap; or be with ease Gathered, nor harshly plucked; for death mature: This is Old Age; but then, thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty; which will change To withered, weak, and gray; thy senses then, Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forego, To what thou hast; and, for the air of youth, Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign A melancholy damp of cold and dry To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume The balm of life.†   (source)
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