obtuse
adjective/əbˈtjuːs/
/əbˈtuːs/
- (formal, disapproving) slow or unwilling to understand something
- Are you being deliberately obtuse?
- Perhaps I’m being obtuse, but what has all this got to do with me?
- He was either completely ignorant or being wilfully obtuse.
- She was the most obtuse person I’d ever met.
Oxford Collocations DictionaryObtuse is used with these nouns:- angle
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- [usually before noun] (geometry) (of an angle) between 90° and 180° compare acute (6)
Word Originlate Middle English (referring to something that is blunt): from Latin obtusus, past participle of obtundere ‘beat against’, from ob- ‘against’ + tundere ‘to beat’.
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obtuse