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1 Definition
To obtund something is to dull, blunt, or diminish its force or sensitivity, whether that something is physical pain, a sharp sensation, or an intense feeling.
2 In Use
The therapist explained that grief doesn't vanish so much as it gets obtunded by time, softened into something you can carry.
3 Word Origin
Obtund traces back to the Latin obtundere, a combination of ob (against) and tundere (to beat or strike). Literally, it meant to beat against something until it lost its edge, the way repeated blows dull a blade. By the time it entered English in the 15th century, the physical sense of striking had faded, leaving behind the figurative meaning of blunting or deadening sensation.
💡Fun Fact
Obtund lives on almost exclusively in medical circles today, where clinicians use it to describe a patient whose alertness is dulled, often noted on a spectrum between fully awake and unconscious. The related adjective obtunded appears constantly in hospital charting to describe a groggy, sluggish mental state. Its cousin word, obtuse, comes from the very same Latin root and originally described a blunted point before it came to mean dull witted. So the next time someone calls an argument obtuse, they're using a linguistic sibling of a word doctors reach for at the bedside.
