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Definition of acuteness:

  • (noun) a sensitivity that is keen and highly developed; | a quick and penetrating intelligence | the quality of having a sharp edge or point

Sentence Examples:

Charles had unhappily long been in the habit of perverting his natural acuteness to the mean subterfuges of equivocal language.

It needs little acuteness to detect a congruity between the interpretation of a rule as a counsel of perfection, and the doctrine of the limits of human endurance.

It was also the qualities of his own mind, which, in spite of all its breadth and acuteness, did not tend to penetrate deeply into philosophical or dogmatic speculations.

Their sermons and theological treatises are not literature: they are for the most part dry, heavy, and dogmatic, but they exhibit great learning, logical acuteness, and an earnestness which sometimes rises into eloquence.

There is noticeable, too, on the American side, a labored effort at acuteness of discrimination, an adroitness to exaggerate shades of difference practically imperceptible, and an aptitude to give and take offense, not so evident under the preceding Administration.

Scarcely anything could interfere with the judge's cheerfulness, while Boswell was always falling into depressions about nothing in particular and perhaps indulging in the "foolish notion," rebuked by Johnson, that "melancholy is a proof of acuteness."

The style of Plato is in every way worthy of his position in universal literature, and modern scholars have confirmed the encomium of Aristotle, that all his dialogues exhibit extraordinary acuteness, elaborate elegance, bold originality, and curious speculation.

These tropes thus form an effective weapon against the philosophy of the ordinary understanding, and the Skeptics directed them with great acuteness, sometimes against the common acceptation of things, and sometimes against principles of philosophic reflection.

No one, however sensible to the infirmities of Charles's disposition, and the defects of his understanding, can refuse admiration to that patient firmness and unaided acuteness which he displayed throughout the last and most melancholy year of his life.

Everywhere is absolute power seen stretched beyond the limits of all apparent control, but finding, nevertheless, a counteracting principle in that extreme degree of acuteness to which the instinct of self-preservation is sharpened by the constant apprehension of injury.

Willis observes that different metals and qualities of the same metal require to be treated with edges differing in their degree of acuteness, and all the standard authorities concur in giving the following code as near enough for all practical purposes.

A doubtful case, involving serious considerations, was almost certain to be placed in the hands of Abercrombie, for his acuteness and tact, and determination to succeed at all hazards, if possible, made him a very desirable advocate under these circumstances.

In "Fifteen Days" the political influences of slavery are only very remotely considered, while the personal and social results of the system are examined with incisive acuteness united to a warmth of feeling which at last breaks forth into pathetic lament.

The legal acuteness, the passionate declamations, the sound maxims of jurisprudence, the wit and irony interspersed in it, the fluctuations of hope and fear in the different persons, and the completeness and suddenness of the catastrophe, cannot be surpassed.

It will be observed by readers, that while I have generally described the activities of modern Indians, that the real purpose of the book is to bring before the American public the acuteness of the Indian problem, and to suggest certain recommendations.

Certainly, of all others, from their affinity to ourselves, and their proverbially shrewd acuteness in all matters of commercial detail, the Americans are most likely to form an accurate estimate both of our position and our prospects in regard to foreign trade.

But as the mental faculties become more fully developed and more important to his welfare than mere sense acuteness, the lighter tints of skin, and hair, and eyes, would cease to be disadvantageous whenever they were accompanied by superior brain power.

They have all fallen into the snare of the man Broker; and at the very outset of life, in the heyday and spring of their existence, they can count both sides of a shilling with the acuteness of a born Pennsylvanian.

For this village constable was an omnivorous reader of the detective novel, and ardently admired the preternatural acuteness and dexterity brought into play by the fictitious miracle-mongers, who therein are depicted as ever able to solve the most impenetrable of mysteries.

Ashamed, however, of such an exhibition of legal acuteness, he declared that he had no intention to take advantage of such a reading of the document; he cited it merely as an instance of the manner in which very cunning people sometimes overreach themselves.

Some approach to this plan has been made during the war in the interests of increased productivity; and the situation consequent upon the war in the belligerent countries is likely to aggravate rather than abate the acuteness of the problem of productivity.

The truth was, they often neither comprehended the design nor conceived the utility of such works, but on subjects in any degree familiarized to their ideas, they generally testified not only acuteness of discernment but a large portion of good sense.

"But, surely, that would be madness," exclaimed Sir Thomas, stepping back and looking at his young lieutenant in astonishment, while he secretly wondered whether he had not, after all, overrated Roger's acuteness, and promoted him somewhat hastily and rashly.

Under the impulse of this idea, the closing portions of his twelve-paged letter became a fierce tirade against the existing state of society; but the last sentence was so astonishing to me individually, that I blushed with the acuteness of my feelings.

The difficulty of seeing the more delicate markings of the planet is unquestionable, and an examination of astronomical literature, from which we shall make numerous quotations, indicates only too plainly the acuteness of vision, and the time and care necessary to make competent observations.

These are not so ignorant, and are, even in appearance, different from those of their original country, who are a heavy and loutish race, while the citizens are thin, sharp, active in money-making arts, and remarkable for their acuteness in mercantile transactions.

He has neither acuteness of remark, nor a flow of language, both which might be expected from his writings, as these are no less distinguished by a sustained and impassioned tone of declamation than by novelty of opinion or brilliant tracks of invention.

They show the acuteness of their understanding in a thousand ways; in poetry, in romantic tales, in narrative compositions, in legal acumen and extempore arguments, in the study of medicine, chiefly in that masterly eloquence by which so many of them are distinguished.

Either the pupil is spurred on to preternatural acuteness and becomes a credit to his parents and his teachers, or he succumbs entirely to the benumbing influence of an over-wrought intellect and is rendered unfit for the great physical struggle for existence.

Why should society, with its long and deep-hidden processes of growth, its innumerable intricacies and far-off historic complexities, be as an open book to any reader of its pages who brings acuteness and passion, but no patience nor calm accuracy of meditation?

I shall answer, then, that he had none of the profound legislative wisdom, piercing sagacity, or rich, impetuous, high-wrought imagination of Burke; the manly eloquence, strong sense, exact knowledge, vehemence, and natural simplicity of Fox: the ease, brilliancy, and acuteness of Sheridan.

Wild rein-deer live in the mountains and woods, and the hunting of them is, in general, attended with excessive fatigue; as they are endowed with astonishing muscular powers, and also possess a nicety and acuteness of precaution which can scarcely be equalled.

By degrees the enemies of Galileo and of the new stars found it impossible to persevere in their disbelief, whether real or pretended, and at length seemed resolved to compensate for the sluggishness of their perception, by its acuteness when brought into action.

This means that he did not fulfil his tacitly assumed task, and that although he re-examined the problem with marvelous acuteness after Plato, he failed truly to rid himself of the Platonic definition, by substituting a firmly-established one of his own.

This total failure of men, all of them of unquestionable acuteness, and some of them of splendid genius, in their attempts to discover the common phenomena of fever, affords a strong presumption that they have not pursued their object in the right path.

The stereoscope is well adapted to prove binocular fusion in these cases; only we must then take care that sufficiently large letters are present in the visual field of the defective eye, so that they may easily be recognized with the existing visual acuteness.

Of crude undisciplined mind, and little scholarship, yet endowed with native acuteness and sagacity, and with no mean power of expressing himself, Paine succeeded in making everybody read what he wrote, and achieved a popular reputation out of all proportion to his real merit.

The early habits of Dryden's education and poetical studies gave his researches somewhat too much of a metaphysical character; and it was a consequence of his mental acuteness, that his dramatic personages often philosophized or reasoned, when they ought only to have felt.

In arriving where he was in the English social world, he had increased, not only the need for luxury of body, but the sensitiveness and acuteness of certain perceptions as to his fellow creatures, and these perceptions were not likely to slumber again.

He then takes up the statistics which had accumulated since the publication of his pamphlet, showing in a forcible manner that the Northern Free States were steadily gaining on the Southern Slave States, and carries forward the argument with great acuteness.

It was satisfactory at that time to perceive that, far from showing any of that distaste to legal studies which might have been anticipated from some parts of his intellectual character, he entered upon them not only with great acuteness, but considerable interest.

He ascribes to savages a psychical acuteness that I am by no means willing to allow them, inasmuch as he makes them give a psychical causation for their adoption of the serpent as a deity, such as no ignorant and uncultivated savage could have possibly evolved.

We speak of the acuteness of an observer or a reasoner, the insight and discernment of a student, a clergyman, or a merchant, the sagacity of a hound, the keenness of a debater, the shrewdness of a usurer, the penetration, perspicacity, and acumen of a philosopher.

His keen intuition of truth, his vigor and yet sobriety of argument, his fertility of illustration and acuteness of sarcasm, made him irresistible to his antagonists; and the evanescent triumphs of scornful controversy have given place to the sedate applause of a long-lived posterity.

Aristotle is aware of the seriousness and difficulty of the problem, but in spite of the vividness with which he pictures, and the acuteness with which he analyses, the situation in which such action occurs, it cannot be said that he solves the problem.

Yet the genius, the intellectual acuteness, the lofty aims, and wonderful conversational power of Socrates overcame all his natural defects, attracted Alcibiades irresistibly, and welded the two together in an intellectual sympathy that set aside all differences of form and character.

Kelly was able to make his second volume on the respective claims of Individualism and Collectivism an exposition which, for clearness of insight, acuteness of philosophical observation, wealth of historical knowledge, and sanity of judgment, has few equals in the modern literature of social problems.

He was favored in being able to prosecute his studies privately, and the judgment exercised by him in his self-selected course of reading, gave evidence of that solidity of character and acuteness of discrimination which distinguished him throughout his professional and public career.

This doctrine he contrived to carry out with much acuteness; as, indeed, everything can be maintained when one permits oneself to use words altogether vaguely, and to employ and apply them in a sense now wider, now narrower, now closer, now more remote.

The banker listened with keen attention, put sundry questions which revealed his own acuteness, and in pursuance of the topic talked to Morgan graphically until after midnight of the large enterprises involving new mechanical discoveries in which his firm was engaged.

Dalton, not being able clearly to understand my communication, which I own, to prevent any searching scrutiny on his part, I did my best to envelop in a covering of technicalities, referred me to his eldest daughter, in whose acuteness he reposes much confidence.

The lawyer, no doubt, might manage it best, yet Anne had an instinctive confidence, in a search which should be guided, not by business-like acuteness alone, but by the loving energy of a heart which yearned over the outcast Norman, the desolate exiled brother.

What he really could have done best, had his industry equalled his acuteness, and his ambition been less towards the side of pomp and power, would have been something in literary and metaphysical criticism, as may be seen in his letters to Cowper and others.

Time, place, distance, locality, the laws of light and sound, the phenomena of science, are all invoked, not with the abstruse pedantry of a bookworm, but with the ready-witted acuteness of one who has studied mankind in the party-colored page of real life.

Reginald was sorely puzzled: on one side was the sagacious experience of the chief, added to the strong evidence afforded by the shred of silk; on the other, the confident assurance of a youth, of whose diffidence and acuteness he had seen so many proofs.

As a popular leader, the advantage which daring would have given him is more than counterpoised by an acuteness and refinement of mind which have no sympathy with the mass of men, and which they in turn are likely to distrust from imperfect comprehension.

Facts of time, place and circumstance in the charges preferred were withheld from him, and he was so confused and embarrassed that unless a man of acuteness and presence of mind he might become involved in inextricable contradictions when he attempted to explain himself.

He had plenty of learning and some acuteness, and the tone of his mind is eminently judicious, but he could hardly rise to the appreciation of conceptions greater than his own, and the shrine at which he worshiped was that of academic elegance and delicate refinement.

Thus, an artist will talk habitually of such matters as arrest the peculiar perceptions he has quickened into acuteness by culture, and even use the technicalities of language which, though familiar to him, may be, and probably are, unintelligible to persons of general cultivation only.

If Hartmann's divergence is a mere 'invention,' he not only deserves praise for his sagacious skill in constructing a story, but excites admiration for the acuteness which enabled him to detect the leading motif of the adventure to which his source afforded absolutely no clue.

While he identifies these speculations with the recent writers who have adopted them, he is not to be understood as allowing that these writers have originated any novel speculations, or excelled the skeptics of former times in acuteness, or plausibility, or success in urging their cause.

His face, much tanned by the sun, might have passed as plain and insignificant to a superficial observer, but, upon a narrower inspection, there was a certain expression about the eyes and mouth which, in addition to cunning and acuteness, bespoke daring and audacity.

A second later I distinguished some dark moving object farther back in the cavern, farther perhaps than human eye had ever before penetrated; for fear had sharpened my sight, and given all my senses an acuteness of perception which I had never before experienced.

King Henry was delighted with him, and after examining him closely on all the rules of chivalry, as well as on other points, to which Geoffrey replied with much acuteness, showing himself a good scholar even in Latin, resolved to make him his son-in-law.

Johnson, whose friendly partiality to the companion of his Tour represents him as one 'whose acuteness would help my inquiry, and whose gaiety of conversation, and civility of manners, are sufficient to counteract the inconveniences of travel, in countries less hospitable than we have passed.'

There are, indeed, few books in the English language which contain passages of greater power, feeling, and eloquence than this work, which delineate frailty and vice with more energy and acuteness, or describe historical scenes with such bold imagery and such glowing language.

His writings belong to theology rather than to literature, but there is an intensity and a spiritual elevation about them, apart from the profundity and acuteness of the thought, which lift them here and there into the finer ether of purely emotional or imaginative art.

All the court were in admiration at the acuteness and wisdom of their new governor; all of whose sentences and decrees, being noted down by the appointed historiographer, were immediately transmitted to the duke, who waited for these accounts with the utmost impatience.

The acuteness and technical accuracy of Madison's voluminous arguments make but more impressive the narrowness of outlook, which saw only the American point of view, and recognized only the force of legal precedent, at a time when the foundations of the civilized world were heaving.

A special acuteness and detachment, a sharp angle of vision the foreigner will often achieve; but not that absence of self-consciousness, that ease and fellowship and sense of common values which make for intimacy, and sanity, and the quick give and take of familiar intercourse.

Well aware that his master, with all his acuteness and sagacity, was but the more prone to be deceived by soothsayers, astrologers, diviners, and all that race of pretenders to occult science, and that he even conceived himself to have some skill in these arts.

Roberts, when he referred to the common mistake of travelers in confounding acuteness of vision with the results of special training or education of the faculty of seeing, results which, as he remarked, are quite as much dependent on mental training as on the use of the eyes.

I was talking about it some years later with a friend of mine, a Frenchman of remarkable acuteness and singular clearness of judgment, who had been in Paris during the whole time the affair lasted, and had followed it very carefully, though not a politician himself.

Now this caressing intonation, impressed by nature upon the upper notes of all these voices, forms a strange contrast to the direction which all singing-teachers agree in formulating; a direction which consists in augmenting the intensity of the sound in direct ratio to its acuteness.

She moved in the profligate sphere of the English court, and later in that of France, without for a moment having the brilliancy of her intellect, the acuteness of her wit, or the whiteness of her character tarnished by vulgarity of action or of word.

While censuring the prelates for their criminal slothfulness, the writer gave his countrymen the benefit of his own acuteness and energy, and published his description, illustrated with an engraving representing one of the nuns, with a portion of the nunnery in the background.

"There is no end to his discussions and arguments; I am astounded by the depth and acuteness of his remarks, though I feel that his knowledge is mixed up with a thousand misconceptions, from want of method and from his ignorance of the visible world."

But in passing we should note, for the consideration of those who may doubt the acuteness of the problem and the immediate practical necessity for a solution, the presence of a phenomenon which amply proves that it is acute and that the solution is necessary.

Johnson, whose friendly partiality to the companion of his 'Tour' represents him as one 'whose acuteness would help my inquiry, and whose gaiety of conversation, and civility of manners, are sufficient to counteract the inconveniences of travel, in countries less hospitable than we have passed.'

"I suppose the learned author very little thinks that the facts which his erudition and acuteness have accumulated for the illustration of legal doctrines, might be so arranged as to form a sort of appendix to the half-bound and slip-shod volumes of the circulating library."

This exhibition had its intended effect, and displayed the genius of this extraordinary man, who, with unerring acuteness, knows so well to give to every public occurrence that dramatic hue and interest which are so gratifying to the minds of the people over whom he presides.

Notwithstanding a defense which was characterized by the same vigor and dignity of mind, and the acuteness of intellect which she had displayed when in possession of youth, health, and power, a sentence universally acknowledged to be unjust and iniquitous was pronounced against her.

Among quadrupeds, it is probable that those which, by their half-reasoning instinct, approach nearest to the power of comparison, and those which, in contrast to the callous-hoofed, possess an acuteness of feeling, and therefore the nearest approximate intelligence, are the most prone to dream.

He has brought the labors of all who have written upon the various ramifications of the Indo-European languages, to bear upon the elucidation of our mother tongue, with an acuteness of criticism and a breadth of view, that distances all his predecessors or contemporaries in the same field.

I have before mentioned the propensity of these people for story-telling, and I much fear that when, with their native acuteness in discriminating character, they detect an anxiety on the part of the questioner for old stories, no difficulty exists in the concoction of one for him.

But this very acuteness of apprehension induces a caution in not resenting the assaults of wit, unless the wounded can retort with success by a similar weapon, or that the attack has been so obvious that he is justified in resenting it by a less poetical one.

How do the young people pick up with such surprising quickness and acuteness the looks and whispers meant to pass over their heads, the merry glances, nervous shrugs, quick blushes, and indignant pouts, which have suddenly grown strangely prevalent in the blooming circle?

He rose, and attempted to defend his conduct: but neither his legal acuteness, nor that fluent and sonorous elocution which was in his family a hereditary gift, and of which none of his family had a larger share than himself, availed him on this occasion.

It is almost impossible for the civilized man to realize the acuteness of the senses of one accustomed to trust his life to his senses, the sight, hearing, and even scent seem to become added to in power, and in fact to have an additional sense given to each.

Those who have made the greatest addition to our knowledge of the character of these lines, and have constructed maps based on Martian latitude and longitude are accredited on other grounds as being endowed with remarkable acuteness of vision coupled with persistence and painstaking care in observation.

It remains for us to notice the third branch of knowledge, relating to the rule for the proper regulation of our life, which we truly denominate the knowledge of works of righteousness; in which the human mind discovers somewhat more acuteness than in the two former particulars.

It appears, from the various pictures of the world, that, with all his bashfulness, he had conversed with many distinct classes of men, had surveyed their ways with very diligent observation, and marked with great acuteness the effects of different modes of life.

It has been maintained by high authority, that the natural acuteness of our sensuous faculties cannot be heightened by use, and hence, that the minutest details of the image formed on the retina are as perfect in the most untrained as in the most thoroughly disciplined organ.

It appears, from his various pictures of the world, that, with all his bashfulness, he had conversed with many distinct classes of men, had surveyed their ways with very diligent observation, and marked, with great acuteness, the effects of different modes of life.

A more remarkable example, I believe, has never been recorded in history than the fate of William Lyon Mackenzie, a man possessing an acuteness of mind, powers of reasoning, and great persuasiveness, with indefatigable research and industry, such as rarely fall to obscure and ill-educated men.

Two peculiarities appear in isolated cases of congenital amblyopia, which may render the testing of vision difficult: rapid fatigue of the retina, and depreciation of the central visual acuteness in such a way, that an adjoining part of the retina possesses a better visual faculty than the center.

It is a special faculty, an inborn capacity, a delight in the exercise of exceptional acuteness of eyesight and natural dexterity, coupled with the gift of imagination as to the true meaning of what he observes, that imparts to the observer the requisite enthusiasm for double star observing.

As to light, the great creator might, for aught we know, find a substitute; feelers, for example, endued with a certain acuteness of sense: or, at all events, the least imaginable degree of light might answer every purpose to organs adapted to this kind of twilight.

He wore a mask, but a mask of simple construction; not one of those complex contrivances of modern invention which are so like the real skin that it requires the acuteness and patience of a scientific observer to detect the difference and point out the nature of the deception.

In somnambulism the field of vision and acuteness of sight are about doubled, hearing is made very acute, and smell is so intensely developed that a subject can find by scent the fragment of a card, previously given him to feel, and then torn up and hidden.