stone-blind, a. (n.)
(ˌstəʊnˈblaɪnd)
(Also as two words.)
[stone n. 19.]
Blind as a stone; completely blind. a. lit.
| c 1375 Sc. Leg. Saints xii. (Matthias) 420 Sic a drynk þat quha-euire of it cane taste, he worde stane-blynde. 1591 Greene Conny Catching ii. Wks. (Grosart) X. 85, I haue seen men ston-blind offer to lay bets. 1742 Phil. Trans. XLII. 264 The famous Statuary Ganibasius,..though stone⁓blind, could by Feeling make a Statue in Clay. 1891 Kipling Light that Failed xiii, Dick Heldar..has gone blind... He has been stone-blind for nearly two months. |
b. fig. (In quot. 1849 a humorous strengthening of blind a. in sense 10.)
| 1596 Dalrymple tr. Leslie's Hist. Scot. I. 128 Quha now, nocht stane blind,..wil nocht sinceirlie grant, the forme of Scotland..to be elegant? 1648 Petit. Eastern Assoc. 17 So stoneblinde, as not to see..worse in themselves. 1849–50 Dickens Dav. Copp. xxiii, A little half-blind entry where you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing at all. 1864 Lowell Rebellion Writ. 1890 V. 119 In disputable matters, every man sees according to his prejudices, and is stone-blind to whatever he did not expect or did not mean to see. |
† c. as n. = stone-blindness. Obs. nonce-use.
| c 1500 Rowlis Cursing 61 in Laing Anc. Poet. Scot., The stane-wring, stane and stane blind. |
Hence stone-blindness.
| 1868 Milman St. Paul's xiii. 345 Laud's stone-blindness to the signs of the times. 1869 Spurgeon Treas. Dav. xxiv. 4 Stone-blindness in the eyes arises from stone in the heart. |