bluffly r in a blunt direct manner Usage(s) He treated Langdon bluffly as an old paland took his girl away from him. To Milton the man he is bluffly antipathetic, regards him as the arch-heretic of an heretical age, a humorless megalomaniac. The doctors whom he saw blithely suggested that he wear gayer clothes, or bluffly urged him to "soldier on for a lifetime" as a male. Synonym(s) bluntly brusquely flat out roundly