BLEAR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does blear mean? 

• BLEAR (adjective)
  The adjective BLEAR has 1 sense:

1. tired to the point of exhaustion

  Familiarity information: BLEAR used as an adjective is very rare.

• BLEAR (verb)
  The verb BLEAR has 1 sense:

1. make dim or indistinct

  Familiarity information: BLEAR used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BLEAR (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Tired to the point of exhaustion

Synonyms:

blear; blear-eyed; bleary; bleary-eyed

Similar:

tired (depleted of strength or energy)

• BLEAR (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they blear    ... he / she / it blears   
Past simple: bleared   
Past participle: bleared   
-ing form: blearing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make dim or indistinct

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

blear; blur

Context example:

The fog blurs my vision

Hypernyms (to "blear" is one way to...):

alter; change; modify (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation)

Cause:

blur; dim; slur (become vague or indistinct)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

 Context examples 

The meat, and the tea, and the tobacco seemed to have brought him back to life, and he gripped tighter hold of the idea behind his age-bleared eyes.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Yet they had still the human gift of speech, and would take council among themselves in their brushwood hovels, glaring with bleared eyes and pointing with thin fingers at the great widespread chateaux which ate like a cancer into the life of the country-side.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting, far gone in rum, with his arms on the table.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The sharp ears were not pricked so sharply as he had seen them on other wolves; the eyes were bleared and bloodshot, the head seemed to droop limply and forlornly.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"To cook by your fire and to sleep under your roof for the night," I had announced on entering old Ebbits's cabin; and he had looked at me blear- eyed and vacuous, while Zilla had favored me with a sour face and a contemptuous grunt.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Gatsby looked with vacant eyes through a copy of Clay's Economics, starting at the Finnish tread that shook the kitchen floor and peering toward the bleared windows from time to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were taking place outside.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)