- lack of quickness, alertness, or sensitivity in perception, intellect, or feeling, often arising from conscious or unconscious resistance: What I find very tiresome is your willful obtuseness—your refusal to admit facts that are well-known or arguments you have lost.
- the quality or degree of bluntness in physical form; lack of sharpness or acuteness: Platybasia is an abnormal obtuseness of the basal angle of the brain.
- the fact or quality of being indistinctly felt or perceived, as pain or sound: The chief indication of deep-seated, pervasive inflammation seems to be the obtuseness of the pain.
