purblind

Jul. 19th, 2016 07:41 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (words are sexy)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
purblind (PUR-blaind) - adj., having poor vision, nearly or partially blind; slow in understanding or discernment.


Originally, in the late 1200s when it was two words, pur blind, it meant completely blind, but by the mid-1400s the meaning had shifted to partial (compare the confusion over the meaning of the first part of parboil). The pur- part might originally have been a version of pure or it might have been the Anglo-Norman perfective prefix pur-.

---L.

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