1. Without eyes. a. Of certain animals: Having no eyes. b. Of a needle: Made without an eye. c. Of a plant, etc.: Without buds.
1570. in Levins, Manip., 91.
a. 1822. Shelley, Assassins, ii. in Ess. & Lett. (Camelot), 171. The eyeless worms of earth.
1848. Carpenter, Anim. Phys., 12. In … the great cave of Kentucky are found numerous small eyeless fishes.
1871. Athenæum, 26 Aug., 275. Paris has sewers, and strange, eyeless … beings swarm through them.
2. Deprived of the eyes, having the eyes removed.
1592. Shaks., Rom. & Jul., V. iii. 126. What Torch is yond that vainely lends his light To grubs, and eyelesse Sculles? Ibid. (1605), Lear, III. vii. 96. Turne out that eyelesse Villaine.
1671. Milton, Samson, 38. Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza.
1725. Pope, Odyss., XIII. 145. The vengeance vowed for eyeless Polypheme.
1812. Byron, Ch. Har., II. vi. Through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole.
1857. Whittier, Poems, Wife of Manoah, 15. An eyeless captive.
1866. Kingsley, Herew., I. xv. 287. Night after night I am haunted with spectres, eyeless, handless——.
3. Blind, sightless. a. Without eyes or eyesight, lit. and fig. b. Not using the eyes, undiscriminating: without aid from the eyes.
1627–47. Feltham, Resolves, 164. The eye-lesse night.
1717. Addison, trans. Ovid’s Met., III. 625. Pentheus only durst deride The Cheated People, and their Eyeless Guide.
1766. G. Canning, Anti-Lucretius, III. 227. [He] for a pilot eyeless Chance employ’d.
1814. Cary, Dante, Purgatory, XIII. 61. As never beam Of noonday visiteth the eyeless man, E’en so [etc.].
1859. Tennyson, Idylls, Vivien, 106. I saw the little elf-god eyeless once.
1867. J. Martineau, Chr. Life (ed. 4), 464. Sunshine is of no use in an eyeless world.
1871. Morley, Condorcet, Crit. Misc. (1878), 73. The fortuitous vagaries of an eyeless destiny.
1877. Morris, Sigurd, III. 278. The hungry eyeless sword.
4. Not to be reached by the eye. rare.
1839. Bailey, Festus (1848), 17/2. Like stars … They shall ever pass at all but eyeless distance.
