blunt
Not sharp, or saying things in a very direct way.
- The blunt pencil left thick, fuzzy lines, so Amy went to sharpen it.
- Gran is always blunt: she told Dad straight out that his new haircut looked dreadful.
Similar: dull, direct, plain
blunt or curt?
Blunt is about honesty. Curt is about shortness.
Both words describe speech that is not very gentle, so children use them as though they mean the same thing. But one is about what you say and the other is about how little of it you say.
A blunt person tells you the plain truth without dressing it up. If you ask your gran whether your new haircut suits you and she says, 'Honestly, no, it was better before,' she is being blunt. It might sting, but she is being honest, and she might say quite a lot.
A curt person gives you as few words as possible, and comes across as cold. If you ask a shopkeeper where the bread is and he says 'Aisle four' without looking up, he is being curt. There is no opinion in it at all, just shortness. Blunt can even be meant kindly; curt almost never is.
Both words, side by side
curt
Using so few words that you seem rude.
- When I asked for directions, the man gave a curt 'No idea' and marched off.
- Her reply was curt, just one word, which was hardly a proper answer to my long letter.
Similar: blunt, snappy, short
Why it costs marks
Character questions often ask what someone's words show about them. Blunt suggests a person who is honest, perhaps too honest; curt suggests someone who is impatient or unfriendly. Mixing them up leads to the wrong description of the character.
Definitions and example sentences on this page are the ones a child sees inside Wordrealm, taken from our list of over 1,100 words. It is free to browse, with nothing to sign up for.
Sitting the 11+ in Kent, Medway or Buckinghamshire?
Plain-English guides to each test, from the councils’ own pages: Kent Test · Medway Test · Bucks Secondary Transfer Test