Other forms: blunted, blunting, blunts
Blunt means no edge and no point. A knife that squashes the tomato instead of slicing it, a pencil worn down to a stub, the round-ended scissors children get at school.
The bigger use is about people. A blunt person says the thing straight out with nothing wrapped around it — to be blunt, you are not ready — which lands as honesty or rudeness depending on who is listening. It works as a verb too, and on feelings as well as blades: repetition blunts the shock, cold blunts the pain. Police reports and doctors say blunt instrument and blunt force, meaning a hit rather than a cut. Blunt and dull overlap on knives and part company on people, because a dull person is boring and a blunt one is anything but.
1adjectivebluntWithout a sharp edge or point.
“The knife was too blunt to get through the crust.”
2adjectivedirectSaying things plainly, with nothing softened.
“Her answer was blunt and everyone in the room heard it.”
synonyms: direct, frank, forthright, brusque
3verbweakenTo make something less sharp, or to weaken its force.
“Years of bad news blunt the shock of it.”
Also accepted in games: dull
Blunt turns up in Middle English, and its parents look Scandinavian: it is probably related to Old Norse blunda, to shut the eyes or to doze, which sits beside blind. A blunt blade, read that way, is one that cannot see. The same idea runs through the Scandinavian and German word for a dummy round, blind, set against skarp, live or sharp.
Old English
*blunt
Middle English
blunt
English, today
blunt
From Middle English blunt, blont, from Old English blunt, probably of gmq - origin, possibly related to Old Norse blunda (“to shut eyes, to doze”), related to blind > Icelandic blunda, Swedish blunda, Danish blunde. Compare the Scandinavian-German munitons term blind (“non-live, dummy”), opposite of skarp (“live”, sharp): Swedish and Danish blind patron (“dummy round”), Danish blindt skud, German blinder schuss (“dummy shot”), blinde granate (“dummy grenade”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 10 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word