/blɪə/, /blɪɹ/, /bliə/
OriginFrom Middle English blere, related to Low German bleeroged (“bleareyed”), Middle High German blerre (“double vision”), German Blerre (“double vision”). Perhaps also related to blur.
- Dim; unclear from water or rheum.
“A Promontory Wen, with grieſly grace,
Stood high, upon the Handle of his Face:
His blear Eyes ran in gutters to his Chin:
His Beard was stubble, and his Cheeks were thin.”
“The Devil, now disguised as a half-wit peasant to Lars-Goren’s left, stood grinning, his blear eyes glittering.”
- Causing or caused by dimness of sight.
“Thus I hurle
My dazling spells into the ſpungie aire
Of power to cheate the eye with bleare illuſion,
And give it falſe preſentments, […]” — Comus
- intransitiveTo be blear; to have blear eyes; to look or gaze with blear eyes.
“18th c., attributed to Jonathan Swift, “The Story of Orpheus, Burlesqued,” in Walter Scott (ed.), The Works of Jonathan Swift, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 2nd edition, 1883, Volume 10, p. 403,
Or”
“The street-lamps blearing thro’ the rainy rout,
Each like a winking, sickly evil-eye.”
“1917, Madge Morris, The “Red Wind Blows” in The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems, San Francisco: Har Wagner, p. 83,
Let loose thy snow-winged dove, to rise
And fly across the seething blood-mad”
- transitiveTo make (usually the eyes or eyesight) blurred or dim.
“your ſelf you cannot ſo diſguiſe:”
“Here’s Lucentio, right ſonne to the right Vincentio,
That haue by marriage made thy daughter mine,
While counterfeit ſuppoſes bleer’d thine eine.”
“[…] if it come to prohibiting, there is not ought more likely to be prohibited then truth it ſelf; whoſe firſt appearance to our eyes blear’d and dimm’d with prejudice and cuſtom, is more unſightly an”
- transitiveTo blur, make blurry.
“When winter blears bleakly the forest,
And the water binds gray to its blue,
Safe and sound in her covert I leave her,
Till spring calls again my canoe.”
“1888, David Atwood Wasson, “Babes of God” Part II in Poems, Boston: Lee & Shepard, p. 36,
Now, one among the foremost, looking up
By chance, with horror saw, in farthest sky
Fronting their course, a t”
“He stared at but did not see the bleared reflection of the flanking cherubs a hundred feet above the steel-grey veneer of water.”
Formsmore blear(comparative) · most blear(superlative) · bleer(alternative, archaic) · blears(present, singular, third-person) · blearing(participle, present) · bleared(participle, past) · bleared(past)