2021-04-04 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด – A – abstruse & obtuse

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2021-04-04

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด – A – abstruse & obtuse

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Dictionary.com

ออกเสียง abstruse = ‘ab-STROOS’

ออกเสียง obtuse = ‘uhb-TYOOS’’ or ‘uhb-TOOS’

Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree

Abstruse = hard to understand; esoteric:

abstruse theories;

= recondite, incomprehensible, unfathomable, arcane

Not to be confused with:

obtuse = not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect;

= dull, blunt, unfeeling, tactless, insensitive: an obtuse statement made without considering its effect;

= slow, dim; boorish; indistinctly felt or perceived, as pain or sound

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Choose the Right Synonym for obtuse

DULL, BLUNT, OBTUSE

mean not sharp, keen, or acute.

DULL suggests a lack or loss of keenness, zest, or pungency.

a dull pain a dull mind

BLUNT suggests an inherent lack of sharpness or quickness

of feeling or perception.

a person of blunt sensibility

OBTUSE implies such bluntness as makes one insensitive

in perception or imagination.

too obtuse to take the hint

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Obtuse vs. Abstruse

Obtuse, which comes to us from the Latin word obtusus,

meaning "dull" or "blunt,"

can describe an angle that is not acute

or a person who is mentally "dull" or slow of mind.

The word has also developed a somewhat controversial

sense of "hard to comprehend,"

probably as a result of confusionwith abstruse.

This senseof obtuse is well established,

and it is now possible to speak of "obtuselanguage"

and "obtuse explanations,"

as well as"obtuse angles" and "obtuse readers";

however, it may attract some criticism.

If you're hesitantabout using new meanings of words,

you shouldprobably stick with abstruse

when you want a word meaning "difficultto understand."

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Latin Ties Things Together With Abstruse

Look closely at the following Latin verbs,

all of which are derived from the verb "trudere" ("to push"):

"extrudere," "intrudere," "obtrudere," "protrudere."

Each of these Latin verbshas an English descendant

whose meaning involves pushing or thrusting.

Another "trudere" offspring, abstrudere,

meaning "to push away" or "to conceal," gave English abstrude,

meaning "to thrust away."

But that verb didn't make it past the 17th century.

The "abstrudere" descendant that did survive is "abstruse,"

an adjective that recalls the meaning

of its Latin parent abstrusus, meaning "concealed."

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Usage Notes

‘Obtuse’ or ‘Abstruse’?

Let's look at it from another angle.

In geometry classwe learn about obtuse angles:

those are the wide ones, greater than 90 degrees,

in contrast to acute angles, which are smaller than 90 degrees.

An acute anglemakes a sharp point,

while an obtuse person is not all that sharpintellectually.

Appropriately, obtuse has roots in the Latin obtusus,

meaning “dull” or “blunt.”

To be obtuse is not just to be dim, though.

More specifically,

it suggests a refusal to see something apparent to others,

or a willful ignoranceor insensitivity to the real facts of a situation.

“He appears to be someone who is unwilling to do the most modest things to shut down the story and who, in fact, does the opposite,” said Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at Nottingham University in England.

Mr. Corbyn, he added, “is either incredibly obtuse or he just doesn’t care,” and he has created a crisis he could have averted simply by “taking the advice of people he doesn’t like.”
— Stephen Castle, The New York Times, 3 Apr. 2018

As in TV sitcoms, the parents here are more messed up than the kids. Mitchell is both overprotective and obtuse, unable to see Kayla as anything but a child.
— Daniel Eagan, Film Journal, 3 Apr. 2018

A word that sounds like obtuse is abstruse,

defined as“difficult to comprehend.”

They both come from Latin, though they're not related.

Abstruse derives from the past participle of abstrūdere,

a verb meaning“to conceal.”

Obtuse derives from the past participle of obtundere,

meaning “to beat against” or “to blunt.”

Abstruse is used to describe things

that aren’t easily accessible to the lay reader or average person.

Specifically, it suggests the use of language

or other material that suits the advanced levels of a subject

of which the rest of us might have only an elementary understanding.

Schindler's book is not easy to read;

his prose is technical and his subject matter is abstruse.

But it is also a joy to read.
— Michael Sean Winters, The New Republic, 30 Aug. 1999

In Monopoly: The World's Most Famous Game and How It Got That Way (Da Capo, 2006), Philip E. Orbanes describes how Monopoly evolved out of a far more abstruse, purely educational tool called The Landlord's Game, created in 1903 by one Elizabeth J. Magie to teach the gospel of a reformed tax code.
— Joseph Gildenhorn, The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2007

It is common for obtuse to be used in place of abstruse

—so common that obtuse has another sense in the dictionary:

“difficult to comprehend : not clear or precise in thought or expression.”

She also lovingly introduced the work of avant-garde artists,

making their work seem accessible and inviting

– not obtuse and off-putting – no matter how rigorous.
— John R. Killacky, The Burlington Free Press, 30 Mar. 2018

Wrangling your Facebook privacy settings

—fine-tuning what data friends, advertisers, and apps can access

—is a slog. The menus are labyrinthine, the wording obtuse.
— Brian Barrett, Wired, 27 Mar. 2018

The substitution is understandable:                                                 

certainly, a subject that is abstruse canleave one feeling obtuse.

Think about how out of place you feel at a party

when someone is talking about an obscure author

or film that everyone seems to have heard of but you.

(Our solution: read more and see more movies.)

But the use of obtuse for something that one has difficulty penetrating has not escaped the criticism of some commentators.

When obtuse appeared in a published letter from a Navy general in 1983, William Safire called out the use in his New York Times column,

because the general had used the adjective to describe “political purposes,” which, Safire explained,

“demands a modifier imputing deviousness, not dullness.”

“The General may be the only one to give the word that meaning,”

Safire went on.

“To most of the rest of the English-speaking world,

obtuse means ‘blunt and insensitive,’ not ‘vague and unclear.’”

Safire, though, in a bit of forgiveness,

noted that the general might have been influenced by combining abstruse with obscure,

a word that shares overlap with abstruse

because it can mean, among other things,

“not readily understood or clearly expressed,” as in “obscure rock lyrics.”

Another complication is that is obtuse can also be used

to describe something like an insensitive remark, blunt and poorly thought out:

Shinseki's replacement, Robert McDonald, promptly displayed an utter lack of respect for veterans with his obtuse remarks comparing VA care to a trip to Disneyland.
— Cory Franklin, The Chicago Tribune, 2 Apr. 2018

So, the line that would conceivably separate obtuse

as modifying willfully ignorant people

and abstruse for the language that one might use is blurred somewhat.

It’s possible, after all, for remarks that are both insensitive

and phrased in esoteric language to be both obtuse and abstruse.

Does obtuse add something that abstruse doesn’t

when it's used to mean “difficult to comprehend?”

Your answer might help decide

whether using obtuse for something that makes you feel stupid is right for you.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Obtuse

Definition:

stupidor unintelligent :

not able to think clearlyor to understand what is obvious or simple

Example:

"We are - or so we like to tell ourselves - a nation of animal lovers.

And like most lovers, it turns out that we are perennially obtuse and perpetually baffled by what the objects of our affection are trying to tell us." - Lucy Mangan, TheGuardian.com, November 3, 2013

About the Word:

Obtuse has an ancestor in the Latin obtusus, meaning "blunt; dull."

In addition to the "lacking sharpness" sense of obtuse,

there is the mathematical obtuse

(e.g. an obtuse angle measures between 90 and 180 degrees)

and the medical obtuse ("notsharp or acute," as in an obtuse pain).

Common Errors In English Usage Dictionary

Abstruse & obtuse

Most people first encounter “obtuse” in geometry class,

where it labels an angle of more than 90 degrees.

Imagine what sort of blunt arrowhead

that kind of angle would make and you will understand

why it also hasa figurative meaning of “dull, stupid.”

But people often mix the word up with “abstruse,”

which means “difficult to understand.”

When you mean to criticize something

for being needlessly complex or baffling,

the word you need is not“obtuse,” but “abstruse.”