Also 4–5 blont. [f. BLUNT a.]
1. trans. To dull, or make less sharp (an edge or point).
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVI. xliv. (1495), 568. Whan the egge of yren is dulled and blonted.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, s.v. Reboucher, To blunte the edge or point of a thing.
1596. Drayton, Legends, i. 610. That Blade … Was too much blunted.
1713. Swift, Cadenus & V., Wks. 1755, III. II. 3. Cupid now … blunts the point of ev’ry dart.
a. 1860. G. P. Morris, Poems (ed. 15), 61. Let us by this gentle river Blunt the axe and break the quiver.
b. To weaken the sharpness of (anything acid or corrosive); to neutralize partially; to dilute.
1732. Arbuthnot, Rules of Diet, 257. [They] operate by blunting the Acrimony of the Salts.
1771. J. S., Le Dran’s Observ. Surg. (ed. 4), 48. To touch it with the mercurial Solution … blunted with common Water.
1787. Winter, Syst. Husb., 333. It did not effervesce in, nor blunt the acidity of vinegar.
c. intr. To become dull of edge or point.
1684. Bunyan, Pilgr., II. 174. Its edges will never blunt.
1805. Southey, Madoc in W., VII. The flint-edge [will] blunt and break.
2. trans. To make dull (the feelings or faculties).
1597. Shaks., 2 Hen. IV., IV. iv. 27. Blunt not his Loue … By seeming cold, or carelesse of his will.
1683. Burnet, trans. More’s Utopia, 49. Necessity and Poverty blunts them, makes them patient, and bears them down.
1835. Sir J. Ross, N.-W. Pass., xvii. 270. Our long conviction of the inevitable event had blunted those feelings.
1866. Geo. Eliot, Felix Holt (1868), 20. The mother’s love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities.
† 3. To blunt out or forth; to utter bluntly or abruptly. Obs. Cf. BLURT.
a. 1535. More, Wks. (1557), 76/1. It were paradventure good rather to keepe a good silence thyself than blunt forth rudely.
