Eyesight

[f. EYE sb.¹ + SIGHT.]

  1.  The power or faculty of seeing; sight: attributed also to the heart, soul, etc.

c. 1200.  Ormin, 1867. Þatt Drihhtin shollde ȝifenn uss God sawless eȝhesihhþe.

a. 1300.  Cursor M., 25470 (Cott.). Ert clene and eien sight.

a. 1400.  Cov. Myst. (Shaks. Soc.), 44. Whantynge of eyesight in peyn doth me bynde.

1401.  Pol. Poems (1859), II. 98. But him was ȝovun iȝe-siȝt, for al his grete noise.

1587.  Golding, De Mornay, xiv. 236. The eysight is still good.

1615.  J. Stephens, Satyr. Ess. (ed. 2), 420. The Basilisk and Eagle cannot match his eye-sight.

1725.  Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Juice, It does mightily clear and strengthens the Eye-sight.

1805.  Med. Jrnl., XIV. 330. These organs … manifest themselves to … the eye-sight.

1873.  Bain, in B. Stewart, Conserv. Force, viii. 231. A miser has to pay a high fee to the surgeon that saves his eyesight.

  fig.  1784.  Cowper, Task, V. 452. [It] blinds The eyesight of Discov’ry.

1849.  Robertson, Sermons, Ser. I. x. 167. To our blinded eyesight it seems a cruel will.

1857.  Willmott, Pleas. Lit., xx. 111. The only eye-sight employed is the critical.

  † 2.  The action or fact of seeing or looking; the use of the eyes, look, gaze, observation, view; an instance of this, a look. To set good eyesight on: to look hard at. Obs. exc. in By, from, in (a person’s) eyesight.

a. 1240.  Lofsong, in Cott. Hom., 209. Mine sunnen … beoð … grisliche in þine eih sihðe.

a. 1300.  Signs bef. Judgem., 143, in E. E. P. (1862), 11. For sinful man-is ein siȝt ne let us neuer ben ischend.

a. 1300.  Cursor M., 4300 (Cott.). Quilum allan wit an ei sight.

1526.  Tindale, Luke xxii. 56. Won off the wenches … sett goode eyesight on hym.

1535.  Coverdale, 2 Sam. xxii. 25. So shal y^e Lorde rewarde me … acordinge to the clenes of my handes in his eye sighte.

1573.  Golding, Calvin on Job, 76. Then must wee consider euen by eye sight, that our lyfe … slydeth away from us.

1641.  Wilkins, Math. Magick, I. xix. (1648), 135. That in Josephus which he sets down from his own eye-sight.

1839.  Carlyle, Chartism, iv. (1858), 20. Things … known to us by the best evidence, by eye-sight.

1873.  Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. II. 6. His comparisons … are drawn from actual eye-sight.

  3.  The range of the eye, sight, view.

a. 1225.  Juliana, 30. And het swiðe don hire ut of his ehsihðe.

a. 1240.  Ureisun, in Cott. Hom., 187. Ich ne mai ne ne dear cum lufsum god in þin ehsihþe.

c. 1400.  Rom. Rose, 7236. He wole not … have God in his iye sight.

c. 1475[?].  Sqr. lowe Degre, 608. That profered you golde and fe, Out of myne eye-syght for to be.

1588.  Shaks., L. L. L., II. i. 239. His tongue all impatient to speake and not see Did stumble with haste in his eie-sight to be.

1633.  Earl Manch., Al Mondo (1636), 86. The minde contemplating heaven, walkes beyond eye-sight.

  Hence † Eye-sighted a., gifted with eye-sight.

1651.  Fuller’s Abel Rediv., Bucer, 154. The most judicious and best eye-sighted Fryers.