Word.ws English Dictionary

blearing

blearing is the present participle and gerund of blear.

Meaning of blear

Verb

blear (third-person singular simple present blears, present participle blearing, simple past and past participle bleared)

  1. (intransitive) 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...
  2. (transitive) To make (usually the eyes or eyesight) blurred or dim.
    • your ſelf you cannot ſo diſguiſe:1584, Anonymous, Sonnet, in Clement Robinson et al., A Handefull of Pleasnt Delites, London: Richard Ihones, reprinted from the original edition for the Spenser Society, 1871, p. 52, I Smile to ſee...
  3. (transitive) 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.1865, Alfred Billings Street, “My Canoe”, in Forest Pictures in the Adirondacks, New York: Gregory, page 33

See all 5 meanings of blear

Words that rhyme with blearing

10 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about blearing

What is blearing the present participle and gerund of?
Blearing is the present participle and gerund of blear.

Words near blearing in the dictionary

  1. bleargh
  2. blearier
  3. bleariest
  4. blearily
  5. bleariness
  6. blearing
  7. blearness
  8. blears
  9. bleary
  10. bleary-eyed
  11. Bleas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blearing (page history and authors); blear (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “blearing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blearing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.