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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Purblind

Purblind \Pur"blind`\, a. [For pure-blind, i. e., wholly blind. See Pure, and cf. Poreblind.]

  1. Wholly blind. ``Purblind Argus, all eyes and no sight.''
    --Shak.

  2. Nearsighted, or dim-sighted; seeing obscurely; as, a purblind eye; a purblind mole.

    The saints have not so sharp eyes to see down from heaven; they be purblindand sand-blind.
    --Latimer.

    O purblind race of miserable men.
    --Tennyson. [1913 Webster] -- Pur"blind`ly, adv. -- Pur"blind`ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
purblind

c.1300, pur blind "entirely blind," as a noun, "a blind person," later "partially blind, blind in one eye" (late 14c.), the main modern sense, from blind (adj.). The first element is sometimes explained as pure (adj.), or as the Anglo-French perfective prefix pur- (see pur-). Sense of "dull" first recorded 1530s.

Wiktionary
purblind

a. 1 Partially blind. 2 Near-sighted or dim-sighted. 3 Lacking in discernment or understanding.

WordNet
purblind
  1. adj. having greatly reduced vision [syn: dim-sighted, near-blind, sand-blind, visually impaired, visually challenged]

  2. lacking in insight or discernment; "too obtuse to grasp the implications of his behavior"; "a purblind oligarchy that flatly refused to see that history was condemning it to the dustbin"- Jasper Griffin [syn: obtuse]

Usage examples of "purblind".

Even aside from thy presumption here, in a year thou wouldst be dead, dead as all those purblind witlings who would not see the truth I brought them.

It is a record of how people can see fish and call them flesh or fowl, according to the conventionalisms of dogmatic tutors as purblind as themselves, according to their personal fears of losing invisible shares in non-existent heavenly mansions, according to their credulous belief that God may deny them wings if they, in turn, assert that a sight authoritatively declared to be straight from heaven may indeed have come straight from hell.

It cast about as if purblind (which it was, as three of the four instrument packages were now condensing metal vapor inside their shells), picked a direction, and shot away at six hundred gees.

She was disposed rather to accuse the intolerable narrowness and the purblind conscience of the society around her: and Celia was no longer the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit, a pink-and-white nullifidian, worse than any discouraging presence in the "Pilgrim's Progress.