Definition of "tone-deaf" [tone-deaf]

• Unable to distinguish differences in musical pitch. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "There's a reason that we use the metaphor "tone-deaf" to describe a particular kind of political failure."
• "Whether it's pushing science on a dreamy poet or music on a tone-deaf athlete, society is littered with the rubble of childhoods mangled by parental ambition."
• "Even more frustrating is the inability to reach through the television screen and say directly to a people facing great peril and immense promise that while our political leaders are tone-deaf, we are not."