† a. = BLACK EYE 2 (cf. BLUE a. 3). † b. A blueness or dark circle round the eye, from weeping or other cause. c. An eye of which the iris is blue.
1552. Huloet, When a wife hathe a blewe eye, she sayth she hath stombled on hir good man his fyste, suggillatio, linor.
1600. Shaks., A. Y. L., III. ii. 393. A leane cheeke … a blew eie and sunken.
1622. S. Ward, Woe to Drunkards, 6 (D.). To whom are wounds, broken heads, blue eyes, maymed limmes.
1735. Pope, Mor. Ess., II. 284. When those blue eyes first open’d on the sphere.
1820. Scott, Ivanhoe, iii. His face was broad, with large blue eyes.
Hence Blue-eyed a., now in sense c.
1610. Shaks., Temp., I. ii. 269. This blew ey’d hag, was hither brought.
1656. Cowley, Pind. Odes (1669), 2. The blew-eyed Nereides.
1736. Thomson, Liberty, IV. 670. Strong And yellow-hair’d, the blue-ey’d Saxon came.
1868. Wood, Homes without H., xxviii. 531. The pretty Blue-eyed Yellow Warbler.
Blue-eyed grass: Sisyrinchium Bermudianum.
1884. W. Miller, Plant-n.
