Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having poor vision; nearly or partly blind.
- adj. Slow in understanding or discernment; dull: "a purblind oligarchy that flatly refused to see that history was condemning it to the dustbin” ( Jasper Griffin).
- adj. Obsolete Completely blind.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Quite blind; entirely blind.
- Nearly blind; dim-sighted; seeing dimly or obscurely.
Wiktionary
- adj. Partially blind.
- adj. Near-sighted or dim-sighted.
- adj. Lacking in discernment or understanding.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Wholly blind.
- adj. Nearsighted, or dim-sighted; seeing obscurely
WordNet 3.0
- adj. having greatly reduced vision
- adj. lacking in insight or discernment
Etymologies
- Middle English pur blind, totally blind, nearsighted : pur, pure; see pure + blind, blind; see blind. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“But suppose Franz-Josef, or the imbeciles who compose his cabinet, got wind of it - he's the kind of purblind ass who would take it as a sure sign that all Hungary's out for his blood, and he'd act according, orderin 'arrests, repressions, perhaps even executions, or some such folly!”
“It can only be explained as expressing a kind of purblind inertia.”
“On the contrary, his purblind economic policy mix -- coupling a spending binge with deep tax cuts -- helped dig America into a deep fiscal hole.”
“As the wheezing, purblind, quasi-survivor of the palsied medium of the weekly newsmagazine, Time's deathbed achievement was outlasting Newsweek, its ancient foe, which opted for accidental suicide by dispensing with news altogether and imagining that commercially adequate numbers of people would pay for a glossy magazine composed of the boring opinions of undistinguished commentators.”
The Huffington Post: Conrad Black: Time's Fatuous and Egregious Coverage of Wall Street Prosecutor
“What we don't know rolling in those fields of April chamomile, between those dry-stone-walls of youth, holding one another's bodies like purblind puppies in a cardboard box;”
The Huffington Post: Elizabeth Boleman-Herring: Alas for the Egg That Is Greece
“Purely in business terms, purely as a textbook study in management ineptitude and purblind public relations, the great shambles of Wapping takes some beating.”
The Guardian: News of the World scandal: God's newspaper executive less than visionary
“No one I met fulminated about loss of economic sovereignty or that S&P, whose purblind approval of junk mortgage debt as triple A was one of the causes of the financial crisis, had finally over-reached itself.”
The Guardian: The United States faces a crisis not seen since the Depression | Will Hutton
“The ECB's purblind refusal to reveal anything about the trip, as if it involved some top-secret military manoeuvres rather than just some abseiling and hiking, has goaded the media into a suspicious reaction.”
The Guardian: Pre-Ashes boot camps: team-building fun or a waste of time?
“Clooney isn't purblind when it comes to affairs of state; he's expressed his leanings over the years and personally knows President Barack Obama.”
The Huffington Post: Felice Arenas: George Clooney: 'Hollywood Could Teach a Lot to Politicians'
“And there were benefits even for the purblind Americans:”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘purblind’.
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pustule, purulence, pushful, purser, purpureal, putative, purpure, purpresture, purloin, purline, purlieu, purlicue and 1766 more...
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Collected Words - List 2
I've been saving these words FOR YEARS. Now, I've found Wordie
gasconade, zaccheus, spoor, precentor, bombazine, otiose, khamsin, bruited, viva voce, whilom, lenitive, ebullition and 244 more...
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Thomas Hardy
For his poemage.
honeysucks, beeches, esculent, heath, furze, blest, o'ergrown, eft, heathcropper, powerfuller, crass casualty, dicing time and 11 more...
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wanderstar's Words
superlative, mulish, mumps, catatonic, aquiline, clandestine, phantasmagoria, chryselephantine, microfiche, mutineer, reprobate, ruthless and 312 more...
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Pale Fire
Words gathered while reading Pale Fire.
larches, torquate, stillicide, vermiculate, preterist, theolatry, iridule, vulgarian, cloutish, lemniscate, torsion, trillium and 176 more...
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BonMots
assiduous, progeny, hegemony, nascent, reticent, ephemera, zeitgeist, recalcitrant, copious, corporeal, cacaphonous, obstreperous and 108 more...
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Eocene (Eosin) (Eoscene) (Eoseen) Eng...
Dawn Words in English
swefnum, swefna, secgan, goste, wealhstod, wald-swathu, hearpan, hwaet, leothcraeft, beorhtost, wyrd, dustsceawung and 131 more...
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And another
retrocausality, brusque, gainsay, cheerio, jaundiced, chamois, caw, craw, fudge, bubbler, shebang, bolo and 244 more...
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summer words 2009
how many words can I make mine this summer?
largess, hoyden, catholic, fornicatress, quean, slattern, bildungsroman, sybaritic, descresent, nodus, frittle, callipygian and 529 more...
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Nabokov vocabulary
verisimilitude, geminate, pedantic, intervestibular, equilibrist, nictitating, anastomosis, quiddity, torus, cacahuete, undulation, pensum and 135 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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A spoonful of sugar
Words I should learn/I want to learn/I just learned, with a quotation to help the medicine go down.
approbation, assuage, chicanery, abscond, effrontery, enervation, equivocate, ennui, aftertaste, filibuster, perfunctory, abide and 391 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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the omnibus
preponderance, idioglossia, acumen, heteronym, flux, anacoluthon, metonymy, impetus, constellation, exegesis, revelatory, cloistered and 877 more...
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Pale Fire
rubicund, buttonhole, stillicide, preterist, curio, iridule, lemniscate, cherubic, portico, vestry, rodstein, sectile and 107 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for purblind.

minivet According to the OED, the prefix originally meant "pure," so it was actually an amplification of "blind," but this meaning became obscure centuries ago and it took meanings like partially blind, blind in one eye, myopic, stupid, etc. Sep 27, 2010
bilby
O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
Here, through the feeble twilight of this world
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach
That other, where we see as we are seen!
- Alfred Tennyson, 'Geraint and Enid'. Sep 30, 2008
penfold Purblind means either partially, or not completely blind. It also has a second meaning of slow to understand or discern. Aug 14, 2008
reesetee Purblind is "partially" blind, no? I think the obsolete meaning of the word was completely blind, so it was once a synonym of blind. Oct 9, 2007
sionnach So what's the difference, if any, between blind and purblind? Oct 9, 2007