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Blunt   Listen
adjective
Blunt  adj.  
1.
Having a thick edge or point, as an instrument; dull; not sharp. "The murderous knife was dull and blunt."
2.
Dull in understanding; slow of discernment; stupid; opposed to acute. "His wits are not so blunt."
3.
Abrupt in address; plain; unceremonious; wanting the forms of civility; rough in manners or speech. "Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behavior." "A plain, blunt man."
4.
Hard to impress or penetrate. (R.) "I find my heart hardened and blunt to new impressions." Note: Blunt is much used in composition, as blunt-edged, blunt-sighted, blunt-spoken.
Synonyms: Obtuse; dull; pointless; curt; short; coarse; rude; brusque; impolite; uncivil.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books



... his blunt way, had asked whether he was good for anything, anyhow. Martius had replied that he was considered more than a ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... A jay with skyblue shaft Set in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead. She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyed Her warily, cocked upon tail-plumed haunch, Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves, Whisked himself out of sight and reappeared Leering about the hole of a young beech; And every time she ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... toast, to "The Ladies," or to women if you please, for that is the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore the more entitled to reverence. I have noticed that the Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to even the illustrious mother of all mankind as a "lady," but speaks of her as a woman. It is odd, but you will find it is so. I am peculiarly proud ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... him about like a shadow, and Dan did not repulse him as rudely as he did others, but said, in his blunt way, "You are all right; don't worry about me. I can stand it better than ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... brevetted as such by the applause of others. And while to be a noted stylist, and even to be reasonably sure of annotated reissuement for the plaguing of unborn schoolchildren, was all well enough, in an unimportant, high-minded way, Patricia was far more vividly impressed by the blunt figures which told how many of John Charteris's books had been bought and paid for. She accepted these figures as his publishers gave them forth, implicitly; and she marveled over and took odd joy in these figures. They enabled her to admire ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... presented by Sir Frederick Wigan, Bart., in memory of his brother-in-law, Arthur Cecil Blunt. It is a triplet, and displays in its central light an allegorical figure of "Poetry," supported by Shakespeare and Spenser in the lights on either hand. Above the Muse the sacred Dove is hovering, symbolical of the divine inspiration which we may presume guided the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... was very cheerful: my lord, at the head of the table, looked only like his lady in a riding-dress. However, he received one mortifying trial of his temper - he had sent to request sailing up the Tamer next day with Sir Richard Bickerton; and he had a blunt refusal, in a note, during our repast. Not an officer in the fleet would accommodate him; their resentment of the dinner slight is quite ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... and wears away our lives, is not in external things, but in the resistance of our wills to the will of God expressed by external things. I suppose that we shall never here bring these wills of ours into perfect correspondence with His, any more than we shall ever, with our shaking hands and blunt pencils, draw a perfectly straight line. But if will and heart are brought even to a rude approach to parallelism with His, if we accept His voice when He takes away, and obey it when He commands, we shall be quiet and peaceful. We shall be strong and unwearied, freed from corroding ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... does he expect it to be? would he have us represent it as beautiful and gratifying? The answer to this question, I fear, must be a blunt Yes; for it seems impossible to root out of an Englishman's mind the notion that vice is delightful, and that abstention from it is privation. At all events, as long as the tempting side of it is kept towards the public, and softened by plenty of sentiment and sympathy, it is welcomed by our ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... indulged in a new cypher. Walsh (his financial friend) is Legrand, Kennedy is Newton (as before), Dormer at Antwerp (his correspondent with England) is Mr. Blunt, 'Gorge in England' (Gorge!) is Mr. White, and so on. Owing to the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, there was a good deal of correspondence with 'Dixon' and 'Miss Fines'—certainly Lady Primrose—while Dixon may be James ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... Chester, relaxing his face when he was fairly gone, 'is good practice. I HAVE some command of my features, beyond all doubt. He fully confirms what I suspected, though; and blunt tools are sometimes found of use, where sharper instruments would fail. I fear I may be obliged to make great havoc among these worthy people. A troublesome necessity! I ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... that blocks certain categories of material deemed by the library board as unsuitable for use in their facilities. Indeed, 7% of American public libraries use blocking software for adults. Although such programs are somewhat effective in blocking large quantities of pornography, they are blunt instruments that not only "underblock," i.e., fail to block access to substantial amounts of content that the library boards wish to exclude, but also, central to this litigation, "overblock," i.e., block access to large quantities ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... waiting and at concealing Bismarck was past master. While usually figured as a blunt, bold, tyrannical man, there was also a side of ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... buffaloes—a Jat buffalo of no imagination and no sense. He is buffalo enough to love the British Raj and his squadron of Jat farmers with all his stupid Sikh heart! There could not be a better for the purpose than this Ranjoor Singh! He is stupid enough, and nearly blunt enough, to be an Englishman. He is just of the very caliber to fool a German! Trust me, sahib—I, ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... the first wife of Baron King, who in 1838 was created 1st earl of Lovelace, and had two sons (of whom the younger, b. 1839, d. 1906, was 2nd earl of Lovelace) and a daughter, Lady Anne, who married Wilfrid S. Blunt (q.v.). On the death of the 2nd earl the barony of Wentworth went to his daughter and only child, and the earldom of Lovelace to his half-brother by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... plaintive lament to Earl Grey, 'but I do not think I ever can!' There lives no record of reply. The last protest of the Duke of Wellington, delivered just before the measure became law, was characteristic in many respects, and not least in its blunt honesty. 'Reform, my lords, has triumphed, the barriers of the Constitution are broken down, the waters of destruction have burst the gates of the temple, and the tempest begins to howl. Who can say where its course should stop? who can ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... else he was, and as Grace said no more, he touched his cap, and passed on. The devoted admirer of Shuffles's nobleness and goodness was greatly disconcerted by the blunt statements of the second master, who had declared that the ship's company were almost in a state of mutiny against the captain. She continued her inquiries among other officers; but, though some of them thought it was ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... came when I remembered another friend with whom I had corresponded, and whose advice I thought I might now ask with some confidence. This was George Henry Lewes, to whom, when I was a boy in Glasgow, I had sent a bundle of manuscript, with the blunt question, "Am I, or am I not, a Poet?" To my delight he had replied to me with a qualified affirmative, saying that in the productions he had "discerned a real faculty, and perhaps a future poet. I say perhaps," he added, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... dress herself in a black wool gown, intending to watch by Mike, but Stormont's blunt authority prevailed and she lay ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... are not often those which most readily strike our blunt senses. We see the shell first. To the undeveloped mind the material is all there is. But looking deeper into life there comes an awakening to the fact and the significance of the spiritual, the feeling that the reason, the emotions, the joys and ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... she thumbed the bank-notes. The dark brown corduroy was simply, if mannishly cut, and in a way it became her. Her small feet and rounded ankles would have appeared to better advantage in high-heeled shoes and silk stockings than those blunt-nosed boots and canvas leggings. And why in the name of common sense would any woman with hair like that want to keep it tucked away under a close-fitting cap? She would have been beautiful in—— He roused himself from his examination ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... These trees yield a profusion of thick red gum (not unlike the 'sanguis draconis') which is found serviceable in medicine, particularly in dysenteric complaints, where it has sometimes succeeded, when all other preparations have failed. To blunt its acrid qualities, it is usual to ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench

... 14. THE SOT.—A blunt term that needs no defining, for even the children comprehend the hopeless degradation it implies. Laws to restrain and punish him are framed; societies to protect and reform him are organized, and mostly in vain. He is prone in life's very gutter; bloated, reeking and polluted ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... preacher, Father MacDonald was rather solid than brilliant. In manner, he was somewhat blunt. He conversed pleasantly and sensibly; but people given to gossip or foolish talk soon learned to steer clear of him. Hospitality was with him a Christian duty. If he heard that some ecclesiastic was at the hotel—and he heard everything—he would at once go for him, and place ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... differently the forty-five years had been filled out in either case. Maisie had been forced to ricordarsi del tempo felice through so many years of miseria. Phoebe's journey across the desert of Life had paused at many an oasis, and their images remained in her mind to blunt the tooth of Memory. The two ladies at least heard nothing in the old woman's voice that one does not hear in any human voice when it speaks of events very ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... we should rather ask, Was this the life he meant to lead? Perhaps, when we take into account his faculty of self-deception,—it may be no greater than our own,—we should ask, Was this the life he believed he led? Have we any right to judge this man after our blunt English fashion, and condemn him, as we are wont to do, on the finding of a jury of average householders? Is French reality precisely our reality? Could we tolerate tragedy in rhymed alexandrines, instead of blank verse? The whole life of Rousseau is pitched ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... desert sands, with scornful drift, Besieged the columned aisle and palace-gate; My Thebes, cut deep with many a solemn rift, But epitaphed her own sepulchered state: Then I remembered whom I went to seek, And blessed blunt Winter for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... justice) he wished his wife to be quite free. It did not occur to him that he had done anything extraordinary, either in deserting his wife or in forwarding false news of his death. He had done the simple thing, the casual thing, the blunt thing, the thing that necessitated the minimum of talking. He did not intend to return ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... his hands and was a long minute making up his mind. But his refusal was blunt enough ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... critical scholarship have no seductions for them, for they are aware that the labour is great and the glory moderate, and that the field is engrossed by clever specialists not too well disposed towards intruders. They see plainly there is no room for them here. The blunt uncompromising honesty of the scholars thus delivers them from undesirable company of a kind which the "historians" proper have still occasionally to put ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... deep-udder'd kine, And all about the large lime feathers low, The lime a summer home of murmurous wings. [2] In that still place she, hoarded in herself, Grew, seldom seen: not less among us lived Her fame from lip to lip. Who had not heard Of Rose, the Gardener's daughter? Where was he, So blunt in memory, so old at heart, At such a distance from his youth in grief, That, having seen, forgot? The common mouth, So gross to express delight, in praise of her Grew oratory. Such a lord is Love, And Beauty such a mistress of the world. And if I said that Fancy, led by Love, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... had been a pleasant murmur became at close quarters a menacing tumult. The air was full of bees—bees sallying forth for honey, bees returning with honey, bees trampling on each other's heels, bees pausing in mid-air to pass the time of day with rivals on competing lines of traffic. Blunt-bodied drones whizzed to and fro with a noise like miniature high-powered automobiles, as if anxious to convey the idea of being tremendously busy without going to the length of doing any actual work. One of these blundered into Lord Dawlish's face, and it ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... generally blunt process and usually not articulated at its base: in the plural refers to paired spiniform processes at or near the end ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... other words, but between her son and herself there was a gulf fixed, spanned by no bridge whatever; there was complete isolation; no boat plied between them at all. All the kindly human things which she loved were unintelligible to him, and his coarse pleasures or blunt evasions distressed and bewildered her. When she spoke to him he gaped or yawned; and yet she did not speak on weighty matters, just the necessary small-change of existence—somebody's cold, somebody's dress, somebody's marriage or death. When she addressed ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... Taste being a violation of Good Taste, which in such matters practically means Hypocrisy. The Home Secretary and the judges who try the case are usually far more sceptical and blasphemous than the poor men whom they persecute; and their professions of horror at the blunt utterance of their own opinions are revolting to those behind the scenes who have any genuine religious sensibility; but the thing is done because the governing classes, provided only the law against blasphemy is not applied to ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw

... brave, blunt fellow, and he hated the ways of Loki, his lies and his deceit. He liked best the way of warriors—the thundering charge, the flash of weapons, and the heavy blow; but without the hammer he could not fight the giants hand to hand. Loki's advice seemed wise, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... which he has so suddenly seen fit to seek." Madame de St. Andre blushed and bit her lip. "'Tis the first time I have ever told a woman I loved her," said Calvert, "and I would rather tell her in my own blunt fashion. If she loves me, she will know the things my heart tells her, but which my lips are ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... expedition with a Canadian gentleman, when about ten miles from Montreal they halted at a farm with a good well-built house, named Sault St. Pierre, all looking prosperous and comfortable, and a young farmer, American in his ways—free-spoken, familiar, and blunt—but very kindly and friendly, was at work there with ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge

... projections, made of steel, at the heel of a horse-shoe, to give the horse a firm footing. They are made quite sharp in the winter season, when there is ice and snow upon the ground, but they are generally more blunt in the summer. This prevented the ankle's being cut as badly as it would have been, if the corks had been sharper. Forester looked at the ankle, and found that nothing had been done for it. It was inflamed and painful. He got the woman to give him a basin of warm water, ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott

... produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... merry when his neck is in danger?" answered the cat. "Because I am advanced in years, and my teeth are blunt, and I like sitting before the fire and purring better than chasing the mice about, my mistress wanted to drown me. I have managed to escape, but good advice is scarce; tell me where ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... matchless as an orator, obviously the prophet and inspirer rather than the executive type; Skobelev, blunt, direct, and practical, a man little given to romantic illusions. It was Skobelev who made the announcement to the crowd outside the Taurida Palace that the old system was ended forever and that the Duma would ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... welfare. He suspected shrewdly that she was thinking what she would have done in Manley's place, and was trying to reconcile Mrs. Hawley's assurances that Manley was not actually sick or disabled with the blunt fact that he had stayed in town and permitted others to come out to see if ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... brittle arrows and our poor blunt spears. He learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer. I think he knew when there was a flaw in the flint. Often it does not show till you bring it down on his snout. Then—Pouf!—-the false flint falls all to flinders, and you are left with the hammer-handle ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... defeat the views of the enemy. Such was the leader under whom Eustace hoped to serve his king, and learn the art of war. His friend, Monthault, was a transcript of all Lord Goring's faults, to which he added the most cool and determined treachery, under the garb of blunt simplicity and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... fourteen rows from the stage to the gallery and looks for a lover among the gallery gods at the back." Puffed up with this delightful chatter. "Come now, confess, won't you," I queried, "is this lady who loves me yourself?" The waiting maid smiled broadly at this blunt speech. "Don't have such a high opinion of yourself," said she, "I've never given in to any servant yet; the gods forbid that I should ever throw my arms around a gallows-bird. Let the married women see to that and kiss the marks of the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... might have enabled him to shelter himself against these blasts. With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... hard the rock of Sardonix; The steel but grinds, it breaks not, nor grows blunt; Then seeing that he cannot break his sword, Thus to himself he mourns for Durendal: "O good my sword, how bright and pure! Against The sun what flashing light thy blade reflects! When Carle passed through the valley of Moriane, The God of Heaven by his Angel sent Command that he should ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... showed the astonishment that thrilled him at this blunt question. "I hardly know ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... formidable weapon, which might have suited the fist of Goliath, and was well fitted for the brawny arm that had waved it aloft many a time in the smoke and din of battle. It was blunt and hacked on both edges with frequent use, but its owner would not have it sharpened on any account, asserting that a stout arm did not ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... if I could have done so, I would not have recalled what I had just said; but still, I trembled in spite of myself as I expressed in plain, blunt words what I had only rapturously thought over, or delicately hinted at to Margaret, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... people, the American Government, and natural laws, and the relation each holds to the other—not so well as I should like to know them, but as well as any member of the "Standard Oil," of the "System," or any one of their hirelings knows them. You have been brutally blunt in putting your questions, so don't accuse me of egotism if I bluntly answer: I know them all, top, sides, and bottom, from thirty-six years' book study of them and thirty-six years' actual experience in the nine-pin alleys where they ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... under way with a speech that held them spellbound. It would have held any audience spellbound by its sheer, stark manliness. It was straighter from the shoulder than Yasmini's eloquence, and left absolutely nothing to imagination. Blunt, honest downrightness, that was the key of it, and it took away the breath of all those women used to the devious necessities ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... not seem to believe the old soldier's assertion, and, giving his blunt sword a whirl through ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... Justice to the woolsack, long before the vacancy occurred. "If you take my Lord Coke," said he, "this will follow: first, your Majesty shall put an overruling nature into an overruling place, which may breed an extreme; next, you shall blunt his industries in the matter of your finances, which seemeth to aim at another place (the office of Lord Treasurer); and, lastly, popular men are no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." His Majesty, easily ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... Pegtown, probably). Sixteen miles (two hours) by rail from Port Louis. At each end of every roof and on the apex of every dormer window a wooden peg two feet high stands up; in some cases its top is blunt, in others the peg is sharp and looks like a toothpick. The passion for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... speaks with as accurate an accent as the Parisian, but he cannot quite assume the gay insouciance of the French; if to England, he adores method, learns to grumble and imbibe old ale, yet does not become accustomed to the free, blunt raillery,—the "chaff,"—with which Britons disport themselves; if to China, he lives upon curries and inscribes his name with a camel's-hair pencil, but all Oriental bizarrerie fails to thoroughly amuse him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... rose-leaf is stiff-edged and harsh in comparison. Nothing else has that definite indefiniteness, that melting permanence, that evanescing changelessness. [I did not know that I was using his terms.] Clouds in vain strive to imitate it; they are made of slighter stuff; they can be blunt or ragged, but they cannot have that solid positiveness. Even in its cloudy, distant fairness, there is a concise, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... cazique, and those whom he permitted to inspect it. Gold and silver and copper they knew, and also tin, which they used for hardening the copper. But this new metal was altogether strange to them. It enormously exceeded copper in strength and hardness. Its edge did not, like that of their own weapons, blunt with usage, and they could well understand that, if armor could be formed of it, it ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... and the efforts of the police augumented by private search parties, the car was found in a thicket at the edge of a crossroad some four miles back from the river, and, a little way from the car, the body of Roessle, dead, the man's head crushed in where it had been fiendishly battered by some blunt, heavy object. There was no clew—no one could be found who had seen the car on the crossroad—the murderer, or murderers, and the twenty-odd thousand dollars in cash had disappeared leaving no ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... my proffered friendship with a blunt proposal to rejoin the mess; and yet a moment later contrived to alleviate the snub. For, as we entered the smoking-room, he laid his hand on my shoulder ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in 1909, when a small airship fitted with two 12 horse-power motors and named the 'Baby' was turned out from the balloon factory. This was almost egg-shaped, the blunt end being forward, and three inflated fins being placed at the tail as control members. A long car with rudder and elevator at its rear-end carried the engines and crew; the 'Baby' made some fairly successful ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature, And slander itself must allow him good nature; He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper, Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser; I answer ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... a minute while I look it up," I begged. Feverishly I turned over the leaves of the telephone directory and, cutting with a blunt finger the page containing the small advertisement that keeps my name before the public eye, at last found and transmitted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various

... on again. Brother Archangias sometimes aroused strange scruples in his mind. With his vulgarity and coarseness the Brother seemed to him the true man of God, free from earthly ties, submissive in all to Heaven's will, humble, blunt, ready to shower abuse upon sin. He, the priest, would then feel despair at his inability to rid himself more completely of his body; he regretted that he was not ugly, unclean, covered with vermin like some of the saints. Whenever ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... and altitude, he could see the pock-marks of open-pit mines and the glint of sunlight on bright metal and armor-glass roofs, the blunt conical stacks of nuclear furnaces and the twisted slag-flows, like the ancient lava-flows of Barathrum. And, he reflected, he was an influential non-office-holding stockholder in every bit of it, as soon as they could screen Storisende and get ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... cannot raise her head. What are you doing?—if I may ask so blunt a question upon so short ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... helplessness, and he would hold the cage, believing that he was thus redeeming his pledge, that Peter should be a trouble to no one. Libbie proceeded to arrange the bundle containing their dinner, as a support in the corner of the coach. The neighbours came out with many blunt speeches, and more kindly wishes, and one or two of them would have relieved Margaret of her burden, if she would have allowed it. The presence of that little crippled fellow seemed to obliterate all the angry feelings which had existed between his mother and her neighbours, and which ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... wrought the miracle. The mark is longer than any mortal foot, as if caused by sliding along the stone, rather than sinking into it; and it might be supposed to have been made by a pointed shoe, being blunt at the heel, and decreasing towards the toe. The blood-stained version of the story is more consistent with the appearance of the mark than the imprint would be; for if the martyr's blood oozed out through his shoe and stocking, it might ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... are a blunt and rough people. They are not like the Chinese and the Hindoos, ready to pay compliments to strangers. When a Burmese has finished a visit, he says, "I am going," and his friend replies, "Go." This is ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer

... J. H. Blunt, in his "Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, etc.," defines Pantheists as "those who hold that God is ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler

... to say whether Jerome or Paula presided, the aesthetic mission of woman was seen fully,—perhaps for the first time,—which is never recognized when love of admiration, or intellectual hardihood, or frivolous employments, or usurped prerogatives blunt original sensibilities and sap the elements of inward life. Sentiment proved its superiority over all the claims of intellect,—as when Flora Macdonald effected the escape of Charles Stuart after the fatal battle of Culloden, or when Mary poured the spikenard on Jesus' head, and wiped his feet ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... collected from the account of Tacitus. We expect that they will be as brave; but ruder. Still, the details which we get from the life of Agricola are few. They fought from chariots, and their swords were broad and blunt. As the swords of the Bronze period were thin and pointed, this is an argument in favour of iron having become the usual material for warlike weapons as far north as the Grampians. The historical testimony to the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... thick of neck, brutal of jaw, low-browed, red of face, blunt of speech, the finest, most unmerciful tackler on the football team, stepped up to Stephen and said a few words in a low tone. Courtland could not hear what they were save that they ended with an oath, the choicest of Pat ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... it's partly your fault, and that it wouldn't have happened if you had spent more time keeping your weather eye open, and not so much making love?" Miss Georgie could be very blunt, as well as keen. "Well, I don't see how you could prevent it, or what you could have done—unless you had kicked old Baumberger into the Snake. He's the god in this machine. I'd ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... through the laurel and rhododendron, so had he won his way to the forefront of the younger generation of his profession until, at the age of thirty-five, he had become recognized as one of the most able children's specialists in America. A "man's man," blunt of speech to the point of often offending at first the cultured women with whom his labors brought him into contact, he was worshipped in hundreds of homes as an angel of mercy in strange guise, and was the idol of hundreds of little ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... never replace the familiar one that is gone. There was something mournful in the lingering of this aged lady—blind, deaf, and bereaved in her latter years; but she was not mournful, any more than she was insensible. Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden her interest in the events of the day. It seems not so very long ago that she said that the worst of living in such a place (as the Lake District), was its making one unwilling to go. It is too beautiful to let one be ready to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... keep company with one Good-conscience; and that friend of his youth kept true to Old Honest all his days, and even lent him his hand and helped him over the river at last. In his own manly, hearty, blunt, breezy, cheery, and genial way Old Honest is a pilgrim we could ill have spared. Old Honest has a warm place all for himself in every good and ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... men with those bare hands of his. I can see 'em clear—great, blunt-fingered hands, Anthony. He's coming around the side of the house. I'll go ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... of feeling which has gracefully left the performance of this simple act to his own discretion. Yes, it is in this fine instance of steady principle that we see a discrimination of politeness exquisitely ingenious and beautiful. The English have the reputation of being a blunt, downright people; and their practice of shutting the door after them makes it certain they are so. When they draw to the door, turn the handle, and hear the latch click, they as good as say: 'There, the door is shut; the thing is done. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... at his elbow a mere lad, Of a high spirit evidently, though At present weigh'd down by a doom which had O'erthrown even men, he soon began to show A kind of blunt compassion for the sad Lot of so young a partner in the woe, Which for himself he seem'd to deem no worse Than any other scrape, a thing ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... sensibilities, which enabled him to exhaust all the resources of pleasure where imagination stimulates sense; and a thorough optimism in his theories, which saw everything at its best, tended to blunt the keen ambition which would otherwise inevitably have stirred the possessor of such artistic gifts. Gottschalk fell far short of his possibilities, though he was the greatest piano executant ever produced by our own ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... to hunt hares. To go against nature and inclination is to row against wind and tide. They say you may praise a fool till you make him useful. I don't know so much about that, but I do know that if I get a bad knife I generally cut my finger, and a blunt axe is more trouble than profit. No, let me shave with a razor if I shave at all, and do my work with the best ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... The standing barefooted on a board studded with nails and on broken glass are common tricks which can be seen performed by negroes at country fairs. I felt the points of the nails and found they had been filed down and were blunt. Mr. Marriott sat on the nails to the amusement of the audience while Yoga Rama had gone off the stage to remove his boots. When Yoga Rama returned he stood barefooted on these nails only for about half a minute. He then proceeded to break some ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally

... lost, and which I wonder how you do without,—Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle. You are forced always to substitute the name. They are so mixed in all our forms that half of what we say would appear abrupt or blunt without them. ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... mouth shut. Legs and head and neck are next filled with sawdust, tamped in with a blunt piece of rod or wire or piece of wood shaped for the purpose. Fill in the front legs and head first and stuff some tow behind them to hold the sawdust in place when the specimen is reversed to fill hind legs. After these are filled, stuff ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray

... view of Tegucigalpa is had from Picacho, a long ridge from back in the mountains, ending in a blunt nose almost sheer above the city. Whoever climbs it recognises the reason for the native saying, "He who holds Picacho sleeps in the palace." Its town-side face is almost precipitous, and on every hand spread rolling, half-bare upland mountains. All but sheer ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... surprised Padre, with perhaps a tone of disappointment in his voice. "But no Americans who are yet come this way have been—have been"—he veiled the too-blunt expression of his thought—"have been familiar with The Huguenots," he finished, making ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister

... They, being plain, blunt men, unaccustomed to the amenities of election time, and not knowing how to skilfully approach a subject of this kind, simply announced that they ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... me poison. They first went to Ercole and tried to persuade him to go to the function; and he, suspecting nothing, at first promised his help; but when he heard that his fellow was to go likewise, he began to smell mischief and said, 'Only one of us knows music.' Then Fioravanti, a blunt fellow, was so wholly set on getting them out of the house that he said, 'Let us have both of you, for we know that the other is also a musician; and, though he may not be one of the best, still he will serve to swell the band of choristers.' ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... blunt "good-afternoon" to his mother and don Andres, who were still at table sipping their coffee, and strode out ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... his abilities—that this was refused. He then applied himself to the study of the law; and whatever his real ability, the jealousy of the Cecils no doubt prompted the opinion of the queen, that he was not very profound in the branch he had chosen, an opinion which was fully shared by the blunt and outspoken Lord Coke, who was his rival in love, law, and preferment. Prompted no doubt by the coldness of Burleigh, he joined the opposition headed by the Earl of Essex, and he found in that nobleman a powerful ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... the ring and voiced in no uncertain tones what its editor thought, thinking men and women stopped and listened. Editors of magazines refused my manuscript because they said it was too plain, too blunt, sometimes indelicate—it would give offense, subscribers would cancel, et cetera. To get my thoughts published I had to publish them myself; and people bought for the very reason for which the editors said they would cancel. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... and affairs of gallantry. He was a great refiner of sensual pleasures, had a passion for magnificence and display, and a real genius for court entertainments. He could eat and drink with the gayest courtiers, sing merry songs, and join in the dance. He was blunt and frank in his manners; but these only concealed craft and cunning. "It is art to conceal art," and Wolsey was a master of all the tricks of dissimulation. He rose rapidly after he had once gained the heart of the king. He became successively dean of York, papal ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... observed Mr. Heron's sensitiveness more closely and clearly than Heron fancied, and was talking on only to give him time to recover his composure. Certainly he talked much more volubly and continuously than appeared at first to be his way. After a while he said, in his usual style of blunt but ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... Buchanan never allows that any fulness of inward life can dispense with the duties of every-day life, with mercy, truth, industry, generosity, self-control. The unworthy man who is excluded from the kingdom is not the man of blunt, homely feeling, incapable of ecstatic rapture and exalted emotion, but the man who locks up for himself the gold God gave him for the general good, who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor, who entrenches ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various

... which were of an azure color, some opaque, and as it were in collision together. They were streaked with translucent irradiations of light, which at one time appeared sharp like the points of swords, at another, blunt like broken swords. The streaks sometimes darted out forwards, at others they drew themselves in again, exactly like combatants; thus those different colored lesser clouds appeared to be at war together; but it was only their manner of sporting ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... was his blunt, honest, bull-dog Englishness, which at the particular moment of his appearance on the artistic stage was a quality which was eminently serviceable to English painting. Though of humble parents, his honest and forceful character won for him the daughter of Sir James Thornhill in marriage ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... banner Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. A craven hung along the battle's edge, And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel— That blue blade that the king's son bears,—but this Blunt thing—!" he snapt and flung it from his hand, And lowering crept away and left the field. Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... said carelessly. "A man has to defend himself, and even with blunt swords he will get awkward cracks if he cannot protect his head. Besides, in the arena a man's life depends upon his skill, and the conquered is sure to have no mercy shown him unless he has borne himself well. Therefore, each man is anxious to learn. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... grayly to the edge of the lake, where a breakwater thrust its blunt nose out like a stranded hulk. The water was calm, lapping the sand so gently that it was hard to believe that so gentle a murmur could ever swell into the roar of a northeaster. A launch that was moored ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... This blunt speech moved me, the more especially as the man was French. I could not allow him to point the way of ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... If the axe be blunt it demands more strength:[293] Only through intelligence doth exertion avail. 11. If the serpent bites before the spell, Then bootless is the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... to-day and whatever his feelings, he had so far been outwardly the beneficiary of Tollman's hospitality. Nothing was to be gained, except a sort of churlish satisfaction, by assuming at the eleventh hour a blunt and open hostility ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... that other eye? Bill," asked the blunt young gentleman, whose head was still running on ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... and at last upset his master and himself into the ditch at the road-side. The feeble, heedless, rapt old man might have perished there, had not some carters, bringing up whisky casks from the Ferry, seen the catastrophe, and rushed up, raising him, and dichtin' him, with much commiseration and blunt speech—"Puir auld man, what brocht ye here in sic a day?" There they were, a rough crew, surrounding the saintly man, some putting on his hat, sorting and cheering him, and others knocking the balls off the pony's feet, and stuffing them with grease. He was most polite and grateful, and one of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... 8, 1915, Austria-Hungary was notified that Dr. Konstantin Theodor Dumba was no longer acceptable as that country's envoy in Washington. The American note dispatched to Ambassador Penfield at Vienna for transmission to the Austrian Foreign Minister was blunt and direct. After informing Baron Burian that Dr. Dumba had admitted improper conduct in proposing to his Government plans to instigate strikes in American manufacturing plants, the United States thus ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... this room Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn Perched on a view-commanding eminence; —Inn which may be a veritable house Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste Till tourists found his coign of vantage out, And fingered blunt the individual mark And vulgarized things comfortably smooth. On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag; His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds; They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World. Grim o'er the mirror ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... took his leave of Thomasin, prayed that she might be supported in her tribulation, and so departing met Amos Bartlett who was standing outside the cottage awaiting him. The man gave a forcible and blunt description of his morning's work which brought many tears to Uncle Chirgwin's eyes; then, together, they walked to Penzance, there to chronicle the sudden death of Joan Tregenza and arrange for those necessary formalities which must ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... dextrous dishonesty, to whig impolicy and free trade. These calamities, which were chiefly caused by delaying free trade too long, he ascribed to that measure. The perverted ingenuity thus displayed did not serve his party or convince his opponents. He was opposed in a blunt and candid speech by Mr. Hume, and in one of the happiest orations ever delivered by Sir Robert Peel. Lord John Russell also made an effective reply. Mr. Disraeli received small support from his followers. If the chief was not equal to the exigencies of the party, neither was the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Camville, Nichola de. "Candlemas, The Burnt,". Canfranc, treaty of. Canons, Austin, annals by. Canterbury; cathedral; hall, Oxford; register. Canterbury, Archbishops of. See Langton, Stephen; Grand, Richard le; Neville, Ralph, and Blunt, John (archbishops elect); Rich, Edmund; Boniface of Savoy; Kilwardby, Robert; Peckham, John; Winchelsea, Robert; Cobham, Thomas (archbishop elect); Reynolds, Walter; Meopham, Simon; Stratford, John; Bradwardine, Thomas; Islip, Simon; Langham, Simon; ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... Then a small blunt skiff—manned by two rowers came by under the wall, with the thudding and the creak ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... quietly maturing plan. He had no objection to have Gifted Hopkins about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular solicitude. Myrtle had evidently found out that she was handsome and stylish and all that, and it was not very likely she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... large grinders, or true molars, in each jaw—making thirty-two in all. The internal incisors are larger than the external pair, in the upper jaw, smaller than the external pair, in the lower jaw. The crowns of the upper molars exhibit four cusps, or blunt-pointed elevations, and a ridge crosses the crown obliquely, from the inner, anterior cusp to the outer, posterior cusp (Figure 17 m2). The anterior lower molars have five cusps, three external and two internal. The premolars have two cusps, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... had made one step forward. Kaffar was alive. The blunt Yorkshireman's description of him tallied exactly with the real appearance of the Egyptian. Of course I was not sure, but this was strongly in favour of his being alive. There was something tangible for which to work now, and my heart ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... their adopted Mother, I loathe and spit upon. I have taken the police oath of obedience to my superiors, and I have kept it, but I have never sworn allegiance to His Majesty your King, whom I pray that God may preserve though I am his enemy. To your blunt English mind, untrained in logic, my sentiments and actions may lack consistency. But no. Those agents whom we have run down, you and I, were traitors—traitors to England. Of all traitors for whom Hell is hungry the German-born traitor ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... is well with your dad at last. I'm a poor hand to talk and a poorer to write, for my finger is crooked to hold a trigger, not a pen. But he gave me it to do. Don't take it too hard that a man with only plain words is blunt. Your ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... the principal manufacturers of armaments was held in Whitehall with the object of persuading them to pool their trade secrets. For a long time this meeting was nothing more than a succession of blunt speeches on the part of provincial manufacturers, showing with an unanswerable commercial logic that the suggestion of revealing these secrets on which their fortunes depended was beyond the bounds of reason. All the interjected arguments of the ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... saw him get licked. I could feel it way down in my fingers, kind of—the madness. That's why he went to live at Schmitt's after my father got so he couldn't work much. They always had lots to eat at Schmitt's. I didn't ever work there myself," he added with his customary blunt honesty, "because ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft, Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats. Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... aristocratical party, seeing that Pericles was already before this grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the city, but nevertheless wishing there should be somebody set up against him, to blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it might not altogether prove a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person, and a near kinsman of Cimon's, to conduct the opposition against him. And so Pericles, at that time more than at any other, let loose ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... Plantagenet by the King, makes a thoroughly natural jibe at his former name, Philip, to which he had just shown such breezy indifference. The jest could not have been made to Lady Falconbridge without a direct insult to her, which would have been alien to the natural, blunt, and easygoing fondness of the relation which Shakespeare establishes between the Bastard and his mother. So Gurney is quite casually brought in to receive it. But this is not enough ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... which in all good nature sways backward and forward, is an indispensable condition of the national life. Combativeness and the lust of vituperation are in the blood of the Bavarian people; it is all one, whether we look for them in a riotous kirmess or in blunt ridicule, in the poetic improvisations of which the quick-witted peasants, being especially gifted in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... very blond, clean-shaved, with gray eyes, extraordinarily smooth yellow hair, and short, determined and rather blunt features, stretched out one large hand to the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... you proposed, of serving us as a valet,' said I, 'it is not to be thought of. We are, in spite of my friend's waggishness, but two plain blunt countrymen, and have no more need of a valet than one of those poets which you have spoken of. On the other hand, if you should care to attach yourself to our party, we shall take you where you will see service which shall be more to your taste ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... compliments, we shall talk all night, and never get to the gist of the matter after all. Here is what I want to say. It seems to me that your attentions to our poor Mary are somewhat more than cousinly, and it behoves me to remind you that she is still a married woman. Is that too blunt? Have I ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... at ease, and for the most part left the matter to me. It was well that he did; for as it was, by his untimely straight-forwardness, he once or twice came near spoiling every thing. Indeed, on one occasion he was so unseasonably blunt, that curiously enough, I had almost suspected him of taking that odd sort of interest in one's welfare, which leads a philanthropist, all other methods failing, to frustrate a project deemed bad; by pretending clumsily to favor it. But no inuendoes; Jarl ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... gladly have given Appenzelder also some token of her favour, but she could not have used any of his compositions—the most famous of which was a dirge—upon this occasion, and the blunt long-beard frankly admitted this, and declared unasked that he desired nothing better than to offer his Majesty, with the Benedictio, the first ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Agricola then encouraged three Batavian and two Tungrian [121] cohorts to fall in and come to close quarters; a method of fighting familiar to these veteran soldiers, but embarrassing to the enemy from the nature of their armor; for the enormous British swords, blunt at the point, are unfit for close grappling, and engaging in a confined space. When the Batavians; therefore, began to redouble their blows, to strike with the bosses of their shields, and mangle the faces of the enemy; ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... had time to rally his followers and stay the progress of the enemy. It was a terrible battle. The Archbishop Andreas Sunesen with his priests mounted the hill to lay the sword of prayer in the scales of battle; the Danes rallied, and their swords were not blunt when they turned upon their enemies. Whilst the Archbishop and others prayed, the Danes were triumphant; but when his arms fell to his side through sheer weariness, the heathens prevailed. Then the priests supported the aged man's arms, who, like Moses of old, supplicated for his people ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... intelligent man," grunted Andy Sudds, in his blunt way. "What are you doing up here in this ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... easy manner and an easy chair. He was a middle-sized man, possessed of a very round head, bald at the crown, but having still a lock of dark hair on the summit of his round forehead; very round eyes set far back in smooth holes, showing little lid; a nose blunt and thick over lips that might have been coarse, but were controlled, and betrayed a lurking humour at the corners, to which the upstanding moustaches seemed to add point. For all his peculiarity of aspect, he was a man who left an impression on the memory of something pleasing ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... in different groups. Thus, although isogamy consists in typical cases of a union of naked motile gametes by a fusion which begins at the beaked ends, and results in the formation of an immotile spherical zygote surrounded by a cell-wall, in Leptosira it is noticeable that the fusion begins at the blunt end; in a species of Chlamydomonas the two gametes are each included in a cell-wall before fusion; and in many cases the zygote retains for some time its motility with the double number of cilia. Again, in oogamous reproduction, while in general only one oosphere ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of the Microcosm. In the year 1820 W. Mackworth Praed set on foot a manuscript journal, entitled Apis Matina. This was in turn succeeded by the Etonian, to which Praed contributed some of his most brilliant productions. John Moultrie, Henry Nelson Coleridge, Walter Blunt, and Chauncy Hare Townshend were also among the writers for its papers, who helped to make it of exceptional excellence. Its articles are of no ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up. Had you and I been at Goethe's elbow when, in the October of 1786, he entered Rome and was received by the excited Tischbein, no doubt we should have whispered in his ear, 'Beware of that man! He ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... "sky-scrapers"—an army of giants—down to the water's edge. And, among all the rose and gold and white, the ocean-liner, a glittering immensity of helpless strength, was being hauled and butted into her dock, like some harpooned sea-monster, by a swarm of blunt-nosed, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... Bearn, young Conde, and all our leaders, though making use of less blunt speech, were of the same opinion, but the Admiral cared little for his own safety, when there was a chance of benefiting ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... and will forgive a soldier's blunt speech. I beg you, Sire, to consider the services and the sorrows of Bienville's people, the loyal le Moynes. Where rests his father? Where his valiant brothers, Ste. Helene and Mericourt? Dead, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... This Blunt had a large head of hair, very thick and bushy; but from some cause or other, it was rapidly turning gray; and in its transition state made him look as if he wore a shako ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... blunt with you, and, out of my dulness, to encounter you with a Dedication in memory of that pure elemental wit, Chr. Marlowe, whose ghost or genius is to be seen walk the Churchyard,[578] in, at the least, three or four sheets. Methinks you should presently look wild now, and grow ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... and moral training of children rests squarely upon those who have assumed the responsibility of bringing them into the world, and it cannot be rightly pushed off on to some one else. To the protest of parents that they are incompetent to conduct such training, the only possible reply is a blunt, "Whose fault is that?" If you have been so careless of the fundamental responsibilities of life, you are incompetent to assume a relation which of necessity carries such responsibility with it. It is no light matter to have committed ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... instances; as the genius of the Italians, which is so much addicted to music and ceremony, has moulded all their words and phrases to those particular uses. The stateliness and gravity of the Spaniards shows itself to perfection in the solemnity of their language; and the blunt, honest humour of the Germans sounds better in the roughness of the High-Dutch than it would in ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... from one of the tilts, tied an end of this to one end of the connected ropes. She now proceeded to coil the twine carefully upon a smooth flat rock at her feet, after which she drew from her quiver a long, blunt-nosed arrow, and directly above the feathered end of the arrow attached the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace

... as the mast of a huge trading bark, Impell'd by twenty rowers o'er the Deep. Such seem'd its length to us, and such its bulk. Part amputating, (an whole fathom's length) I gave my men that portion, with command To shave it smooth. They smooth'd it, and myself, Shaping its blunt extremity to a point, Season'd it in the fire; then cov'ring close 380 The weapon, hid it under litter'd straw, For much lay scatter'd on the cavern-floor. And now I bade my people cast the lot Who of us all should take the pointed brand, And grind it in his eye when ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... took office. It began with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and continues our historic bipartisan American policy. Franklin Roosevelt said we "are determined to do everything possible to maintain peace on this hemisphere." President Truman was very blunt: "International communism seeks to crush and undermine and destroy the independence of the Americas. We cannot let that happen here." And John F. Kennedy made clear that "Communist domination in this hemisphere ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... him send me a few corporations, but as that was unlikely, I pinned my faith in The Wand. It was a seven-column, four-page paper which carried staunchly a strange load of problems and responsibilities. In spite of the New York broker's blunt disbelief in the possibilities of a frontier newspaper, I had become more and more convinced during those weeks that only through some such medium could the homesteaders express their own needs, in their ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... Let a man have one of these blades, with a hand to wield it and skill to use it, and he may venture upon an angel with it. He need not fear its holding, if he can but tell how to lay on. Its edges will never blunt. It will cut flesh and bones, and soul and spirit, and all (Eph. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... forget his slender, stooping figure; his bright bald crown, curtained with locks that pended snowy over his coat collar; his weeping, watchful eye; his tottering mien; his high and furrowed brow, lengthening a sharp, corrugated face; his blunt, warty nose, made more striking by a sunken mouth and the working motion of his lower jaw; and his crutch, for he was a cripple. They left a deep impression on my mind. I speak of him as he was in the dawn of his eightieth summer—when ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... in Saxony by A. Breithaupt in 1817, and named by him from the Greek amblus, blunt, and gouia, angle, because of the obtuse angle between the cleavages. Later it was found at Montebras, dep. Creuse, France, and at Hebron in Maine; and on account of slight differences in optical character and chemical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... foulness where others suspected none, and murderous messengers of hell walking in darkness unpenetrated by mortal sight. And all that pain of clearer knowledge of the sorrowfulness of sorrow, and the sinfulness of sin, was laid upon a heart in which was no selfishness to blunt the sharp edge of the pain nor any sin to stagnate the pity that flowed from the wound. To Jesus Christ, life was a daily martyrdom before death had 'made the sacrifice complete,' and He 'bore our griefs and carried our sorrows' through many a weary hour before He 'bare them in His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren



Words linked to "Blunt" :   dampen, desensitize, enliven, candid, soften, deaden, sharpen, point-blank, blunt-leaf heath, desensitise, plainspoken, break, numb, blunt trauma, petrify, damp, unconditioned, stark, crude



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