a. (sb.) (Also as two words.) [STONE sb. 19.] Blind as a stone; completely blind. a. lit.
c. 1375. Sc. Leg. Saints, xii. (Matthias), 420. Sic a drynk þat quha-euire of it cane taste, he worde stane-blynde.
1591. Greene, Conny Catching, II. Wks. (Grosart), X. 85. I haue seen men ston-blind offer to lay bets.
1742. Phil. Trans., XLII. 264. The famous Statuary Ganibasius,… though stone-blind, could by Feeling make a Statue in Clay.
1891. Kipling, Light that Failed, xiii. Dick Heldar … has gone blind…. He has been stone-blind for nearly two months.
b. fig. (In quot. 1849 a humorous strengthening of BLIND a. in sense 10.)
1596. Dalrymple, trans. Leslie’s Hist. Scot., I. 128. Quha now, nocht stane blind,… wil nocht sinceirlie grant, the forme of Scotland … to be elegant?
1648. Petit. Eastern Assoc., 17. So stoneblinde, as not to see … worse in themselves.
1849–50. Dickens, Dav. Copp., xxiii. A little half-blind entry where you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing at all.
1864. Lowell, Rebellion, Writ. 1890, V. 119. In disputable matters, every man sees according to his prejudices, and is stone-blind to whatever he did not expect or did not mean to see.
Hence Stone-blindness.
1868. Milman, St. Paul’s, xiii. 345. Laud’s stone-blindness to the signs of the times.
1869. Spurgeon, Treas. Dav., xxiv. 4. Stone-blindness in the eyes arises from stone in the heart.
† c. as sb. = stone-blindness. Obs. nonce-use.
c. 1500. Rowlis Cursing, 61, in Laing, Anc. Poet. Scot. The stane-wring, stane and stane blind.
