blear

Dim; unclear from water or rheum.

A Promontory Wen, with grieſly grace, Stood high, upon the Handle of his Face: His blear Eyes ran in gutters to his Chin: His Beard was stubble, and his Cheeks were thin.

The Devil, now disguised as a half-wit peasant to Lars-Goren’s left, stood grinning, his blear eyes glittering.

Causing or caused by dimness of sight.

Thus I hurle My dazling spells into the ſpungie aire Of power to cheate the eye with bleare illuſion, And give it falſe preſentments, […]

To be blear; to have blear eyes; to look or gaze with blear eyes.

18th c., attributed to Jonathan Swift, “The Story of Orpheus, Burlesqued,” in Walter Scott (ed.), The Works of Jonathan Swift, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 2nd edition, 1883, Volume 10, p. 403, Orpheus, a one-eyed blearing Thracian, The crowder of that barb’rous nation, Was ballad-singer by vocation;

The street-lamps blearing thro’ the rainy rout, Each like a winking, sickly evil-eye.

To make (usually the eyes or eyesight) blurred or dim.

your ſelf you cannot ſo diſguiſe:

Here’s Lucentio, right ſonne to the right Vincentio, That haue by marriage made thy daughter mine, While counterfeit ſuppoſes bleer’d thine eine.

To blur, make blurry.

When winter blears bleakly the forest, And the water binds gray to its blue, Safe and sound in her covert I leave her, Till spring calls again my canoe.

1888, David Atwood Wasson, “Babes of God” Part II in Poems, Boston: Lee & Shepard, p. 36, Now, one among the foremost, looking up By chance, with horror saw, in farthest sky Fronting their course, a troublous film of cloud,— A strange, dark, troublous film of cloud,— Blearing the beauty of the crystal wall.

Alternative form of blare