blunt

The more an image proliferates in the world, the more nagging it is, and naturally, our brains twist these repetitive ideas into humor to blunt their obnoxiousness.

When they arrived in Los Angeles, the driver handed them a blunt to smoke and drove them to a rundown apartment complex.

In June, Wagner mercenaries left Mali, their reputation in tatters because of their failure to blunt insurgent advances and their history of slaughtering civilians in the name of providing security.

Then the secretary grew even more blunt: “That’s how he had money.”

When pressed on whether she should speak to clients who would be her patients, to whom she owed a duty of care, she was blunter still.