Definition of "blear" in English

adjective

1. (of eyes or vision) Dim; unclear from water or rheum.

2. Causing or caused by dimness of sight.

verb

1. (intransitive) To 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, Orpheus, a one-eyed blearing Thracian, The crowder of that barb’rous nation, Was ballad-singer by vocation;
   • 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 world. To flutter over fields where that dread Silence is! To light on upturned faces blearing at the skies And curiously peck at dead men’s eyes.

2. (transitive) To make (usually the eyes or eyesight) blurred or dim.

   • your ſelf you cannot ſo diſguiſe:

3. (transitive, of an image) To blur, make blurry.

   • 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 troublous film of cloud,— A strange, dark, troublous film of cloud,— Blearing the beauty of the crystal wall.

verb

1. Alternative form of blare