one-eyed, a.
(ˈwʌnˌaɪd)
1. a. Having only one eye; also, blind of one eye.
| c 1000 ælfric Saints' Lives xxxiii. 321 Þa com þider sum broþor se wæs aneᵹede. 13.. E.E. Allit. P. B. 102 Be þay hol, be þay halt, be þay on-yȝed. c 1440 Promp. Parv. 365/1 Oone eyyd, monoculus, monotalmus. c 1550 Cheke Matt. xviii. 9 Better it is for ye to enter ooneied into lijf. 1603 Dekker Grissil (Shaks. Soc.) 3 Look how yon one-ey'd waggoner of heaven Hath..Burst ope the melancholy jail of night. 1665 Marvell Char. Holland, Among the blind the one-ey'd blinkard reigns. 1725 Pope Odyss. ix. 475 From all their dens the one-ey'd race repair. 1819 Shelley Cyclops 24 The one-eyed children of the Ocean God, The man-destroying Cyclopses. 1858 Lytton What will he do i. xii, Waife was still one-eyed and a cripple. |
† b. U.S. slang. Dishonest. Obs.
| 1833 Sk. & Eccentr. D. Crockett i. 24 In the slang of the backwoods, one swore that he would never be ‘one-eyed’. |
2. a. As a general term of disapproval or contempt: small, inferior, inadequate, unimportant; = one-horse a. 2, esp. of a town. colloq. (orig. U.S. or dial.).
| 1871 D. G. Rossetti Let. 28 Oct. (1967) III. 1021 A little hamlet called Kelmscott, the nearest town to which is Lechlade,—that being however but a ‘one-eyed’ town as the Yankees say. 1881 Hardy Laodicean III. 246, I shouldn't care for such a one-eyed benefit as that. 1887 Parish & Shaw Dict. Kentish Dial. 111 ‘That's a middlin' one-eyed place.’ ‘I can't make nothin' of these here one-eyed new-fashioned tunes they've took-to in church; why they've a'most done afore I can make a start.’ 1937 G. Heyer They found him Dead i. 19, I wasn't born to this humdrum life in a one-eyed town. 1947 E. Afr. Ann. 1946–7 101/2 Some had said it was a grand little town; others, a one-eyed hole! 1977 Times 14 May 8/7 In its somewhat one-eyed way, it [sc. Tobago] is among the loveliest..of all the Caribbean islands. |
b. Narrow in outlook; prejudiced, narrow-minded. Hence one-eyedness.
| 1863 J. Brown Let. Mar. (1912) 206, I do believe the man thinks he is doing God service and is honest in his way, though vain and one-eyed to ludicrosity, as you have most thoroughly and delightfully shown. 1874 Swinburne Let. July (1959) II. 302 With all his rhetorical power, he [sc. J. A. Froude] seems to me (even apart from his one-eyed prepossession and palpable special pleading) but a shallow reader of character. 1921 G. B. Shaw Back of Methuselah p. li, There is no reason to suspect Weismann of Sadism... It was a mere piece of one-eyedness; and it was Darwin who put out Weismann's humane and sensible eye. 1971 Austral. Seacraft June 4/2 It seems your correspondent is one-eyed so far as the southern part of Australia is concerned. |