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blindfold

nounadjectiveadverbverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈblaɪndfəʊld//
  • United States//ˈblaɪ̯ndfɔʊ̯ld//

A covering, usually a bandage, for the eyes, blocking light to the eyes.

noun

  1. 1

    A covering, usually a bandage, for the eyes, blocking light to the eyes.

    I put a blindfold over my boyfriend's eyes and told him I had a surprise for him.

  2. 2

    figurativeAnything that obscures the vision.

Etymology

From Middle English blyndefolde, blyndfuld, blynfold, blindfeld, blindfelt, yblynfeld, variants of y-blyndfalled, blyndfelled, etc. ("stricken blind, blindfolded"), past participle of Middle English blindfellen (“to strike blind”), from blind (“to blind”) and fellen (“to fell”), equivalent to blind + felled. Later influenced by the unrelated verb fold.

adjective

  1. 1

    Having the eyes covered so as to obscure vision

  2. 2

    Thoughtless; reckless.

adverb

  1. 1

    With the eyes covered so as to obscure vision.

    They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Every one, blind-fold, draws out a portion.

    The commuters from the suburbs come unencumbered with luggage, children and prams, and can almost be relied upon to find their way blindfold to their trains.

  2. 2

    figurativeBlindly; without due thought or caution.

verb

  1. 1

    To cover the eyes, in order to make someone unable to see.

    Children need to be blindfolded before they hit the piñata.

  2. 2

    To obscure understanding or comprehension.

Forms

plural
blindfolds
past tense
blindfolded
past participle
blindfolded
present participle
blindfolding
third person singular
blindfolds
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).