blear

Etymology 1

From Middle English blere, related to Low German bleeroged (“bleareyed”), Middle High German blerre (“double vision”), German Blerre (“double vision”). Perhaps also related to blur.

adj

1. (of eyes or vision) Dim, unclear from water or rheum.
   The Devil, now disguised as a half-wit peasant to Lars-Goren’s left, stood grinning, his blear eyes glittering. 1981, John Gardner, Freddy's Book, Abacus, published 1982, page 74
2. Causing or caused by dimness of sight.

Etymology 2

From Middle English bleren, from Old English blerian.

verb

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 vocation;
   The street-lamps blearing thro’ the rainy rout, Each like a winking, sickly evil-eye. 1886, John Grosvenor Wilson, “A Rainy Day in Town”, in Lyrics of Life, New York: Caxton Book Concern, page 146
   1917, Madge Morris, The “Red Wind Blows” in The Lure of the Desert Land and Other Poems, San Francisco: Har Wagner, p. 83, Let loose thy snow-winged dove, to rise And fly across the seething blood-mad world. To flutter over fields where that dread Silence is! To light on upturned faces blearing at the skies And curiously peck at dead men’s eyes.
2. (transitive, of the eyes or eyesight) To make blurred or dim.
   your self you cannot so disguise: But as you are, you must appeare. 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 how you devise, New masking nets my eies to bleare
   The latter looked out with three tiers of vacant melancholy windows, which were blank and dreary, save that here and there a “To Let” card had developed like a cataract upon the bleared panes. 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, Part I, Chapter 3
   He was useful to the man, for his sharp young eyes could pick up net or trawl buoys, white with a stripe of scarlet, far quicker than the rum-bleared eyes of his stepfather. 1928, Frank Parker Day, chapter 1, in Rockbound
3. (transitive, of an image) 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
   1888, David Atwood Wasson, “Babes of God” Part II in Poems, Boston: Lee & Shepard, p. 36, Now, one among the foremost, looking up By chance, with horror saw, in farthest sky Fronting their course, a troublous film of cloud,— A strange, dark, troublous film of cloud,— Blearing the beauty of the crystal wall.
   He stared at but did not see the bleared reflection of the flanking cherubs a hundred feet above the steel-grey veneer of water. 1946, Mervyn Peake, “Here and There”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode