blindness

American  

[blahynd-nis] / ˈblaɪnd nɪs /

noun

1. the inability to see; the condition of having severely impaired or absolutely no sense of sight.

   Patients are first asked if their blindness is congenital or the result of injury or disease.

2. an unwillingness or inability to perceive or understand; lack of judgment; ignorance.

   Your blindness to this behavior has allowed his anxiety to worsen.

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blindness Scientific  

/ blīnd′nĭs /

1. A lack or impairment of vision in which maximal visual acuity after correction by refractive lenses is one-tenth normal vision or less in the better eye. Blindness can be genetic but is usually acquired as a result of injury, cataracts, or diseases such as glaucoma or diabetes. In Asia and Africa, trachoma is a common infectious cause of blindness.

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Etymology

Origin of blindness

First recorded before 1000; blind ( def. ) + -ness ( def. )

Example Sentences

She and Basil Petrou developed a financial instrument designed to attract investors to the kind of promising, early-stage medical research on blindness that traditionally fails to gather enough funding to proceed to FDA trials.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 12, 2026

One woman, who has face blindness, has difficulty watching films with more than four characters, but her companion helped to explain who is who when she got confused.

From BBC • Feb. 13, 2026

The answer isn’t ideological blindness so much as methodological constraint.

From Barron's • Feb. 2, 2026

Previous additions include Barbie dolls with Type 1 diabetes, Down syndrome and blindness.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 12, 2026

Despite night blindness, the Pole Star would follow, sniffing at them with its radar arrays.

From "Ship Breaker" by Paolo Bacigalupi

Related Words

• defect
• myopia