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• n  the quality of being slow to understand
• n  the quality of lacking a sharp edge or point

• This year, as every year, the struggle against disease was a grab bag of good and bad--vision and shortsightedness, courage and obtuseness, scientific masterstrokes and experiments .
• But Bush underestimated the depth of Sununu's ethical obtuseness and his zeal at finding a way around the rules.
• But that obtuseness seems--finally and mercifully--to be changing.

• dullness

• acuteness

Quotes

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• Richard Land in New York Times
  The mayor's position on abortion couldn't be more repugnant to pro-liferssaid Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. "It shows a moral obtuseness...
• St Ignatius of Loyola in America Magazine (subscription)
  St. Ignatius Loyola describes it as "an obtuseness of soul, turmoil within it, an impulsive motion toward low and earthly things, or a disquiet from various agitations and temptations."
• Toni Morrison in Philadelphia Inquirer
  I have to say I have my own list of objections that I can peruse at my leisure, not least of which is an almost comic obtuseness regarding women and race . . . which I have to say even he admits to,Morrison said as she presented him the...