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Definition of blear in English:

blear

Pronunciation /blir/ /blɪr/

See synonyms for blear on Thesaurus.com

transitive verb

[with object]archaic

  • Make dim; blur.

    ‘you would blear your eyes with books’
    • ‘There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamplight that had served them to pore over many ponderous books.’
    • ‘Tears bleared my vision as I took every agonizing step, one at a time, through first the winding maze of the gardens, and then the dark corridors, lit only by the faint glow of a torch.’
    • ‘She pursed her mouth, lipstick blearing like a squashed berry.’
    • ‘I honestly just couldn't read it, my eyes were blearing.’
    • ‘I frowned as they departed, and turned to my mother and father, sadness blearing up my eyes.’
    • ‘Despite the hopes earlier held out to him by the Wife, the Husband can now envisage no alternative to ruin and to the ultimate terror of beggary which, he later says, was the ‘thing I feared. / O, 'twas the enemy my eyes so bleared!’’
    • ‘In the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins' evocative phrasing, ‘All is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell.’’
    • ‘Her vision bleared and she couldn't hear anything.’
    • ‘His vision bleared for the last second that he remembered before he fell and everything went black.’
    • ‘She saw the door slam, the ghost evaporate, and the girl running until everything around her bleared into nothingness.’
    make indistinct, make vague, unfocus, soften

adjective

archaic

  • Dim, dull, or filmy.

    ‘a medicine to lay to sore and blear eyes’
    • ‘They were almost transparent, blear beads of amber, slightly filmed with red; blood, a vampire's tears.’
    blurred, blurry, unfocused

noun

archaic

  • A film over the eyes; a blur.

    ‘he forced his eyes open and shut to rid them of blear’
    • ‘The blear in his eyes receded like sea foam before the bow.’
    • ‘She woke up with a start and twelve menacing figures shimmered into focus as the blear left her eyes.’

Origin

Middle English (as a verb): probably related to Middle High German blerre ‘blurred vision’ and Low German blarroged ‘bleary-eyed’.