one-eyedadj.
/ˌwʌnˈʌɪd/, U.S. /ˈwənˈaɪd/ 1.
a. Having only one eye. Also: blind in one eye; unobservant.
ΘΚΠ
the world > health and disease > ill health > a disease > disorders of eye > disordered vision > [adjective] > blind > blind in one eye
one-eyedOE
purblinda1425
peed1673
the world > life > the body > external parts of body > head > face > eye > [adjective] > having > specific number
one-eyedOE
monoculusc1450
Polyphemian1602
monoculate1618
monocular1640
unocular1653
monoculous1656
Polyphemous1695
monoptical1821
Polyphemic1837
triocular1844
monophthalmic1857
monops1857
two-eyed1864
thousand-eyed1871
OE St. Euphrosyne (Julius) in W. W. Skeat Ælfric's Lives of Saints (1900) II. 354 Þa com þider sum broþor se wæs anegede.
a1325 St. Bridget (Corpus Cambr.) 234 in C. D'Evelyn & A. J. Mill S. Eng. Legendary (1956) 45 (MED) To wedde an oneyde quene inelle it neuere do.
c1400 (?c1380) Cleanness (1920) 102 (MED) Be þay hol, be þay halt, be þay on-yȝed.
Promptorium Parvulorum (Harl. 221) 365 Oone eyyd, monoculus, monotalmus.
a1500 Disciplina Clericalis in Western Reserve Univ. Bull. (1919) 22 24 (MED) A versifiour..asked..to have of every courbed man a peny, and of every ooneyed a peny.
a1557 J. Cheke tr. Gospel St. Matthew (1843) xviii. 9 Better it is for ye to enter ooneied into lijf.
1571 A. Golding tr. J. Calvin Psalmes of Dauid with Comm. (lxxiii. 8) Gyantes, or one-eyed Gargantuas.
1603 T. Dekker et al. Patient Grissill sig. A2 Looke how yon one ey'd wagoner of heauen, Hath..Burst ope the melancholy Iayle of Night.
1665 A. Marvell Char. Holland Among the blind the one-ey'd blinkard reigns.
1725 A. Pope tr. Homer Odyssey II. ix. 475 From all their dens the one-ey'd race repair.
1751 G. Lavington Enthusiasm Methodists & Papists: Pt. III 54 Calling him one-eyed, halter, baldpate.
a1822 P. B. Shelley Cyclops in Posthumous Poems (1824) 330 The one-eyed children of the Ocean God, The man-destroying Cyclopses.
1859 E. Bulwer-Lytton What will he do with It? (1st Edinb. ed.) I. i. xii. 82 Waife was still one-eyed and a cripple.
1884 E. M. Curr Squatting in Victoria in E. M. H. Clark Select Documents Austral. Hist. (1950) VI. 282 The poor fellow, who was a one-eyed man, lost himself and persihed miserably for want of water.
1901 R. Kipling Kim iv. 106 Who is the one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has not yet prepared my pipe?
1914 W. B. Yeats Responsibilities 26 A one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed man.
1962 J. D. MacDonald Girl (1979) viii. 105 The [magic] gold watch would give Uncle Omar the insuperable advantage of a one-eyed man in a world of the blind.
1994 Amer. Spectator Aug. 72/2 Peter, the 16-year-old future czar..liked his women lame, scarred, or one-eyed, but what really turned him on were hunchbacks.
2001 Guardian 19 Sept. i. 5/1 Thousands of clerics flocked to Kandahar to inaugurate the shy, one-eyed Mullah Omar as their leader.
b. Cards slang (originally U.S.). Of the figure depicted on a court card: in profile, esp. in one-eyed jack.
ΚΠ
1942 M. Anderson Eve of St. Mark i. ii. 28 I'm penniless, Dublin. I'm flat as a one-eyed jack.
1959 G. Hardin Nature & Man's Fate xii. 262 A poker player has a poor opinion of the neophyte who proposes to get good hands by making deuces, treys and one-eyed jacks wild.
1996 P. Marber Dealer's Choice (rev. ed.) ii. 46 Mugsy's Nightmare? I invented that one; it's five-card stud, hi-lo, two down, three up, whores, fours and one-eyed jacks wild with a twist.
2. coarse slang. In various phrases designating the penis; esp. in one-eyed trouser snake. rare before 20th cent.
ΚΠ
1776 Frisky Songster (new ed.) 146 Toasts and Sentiments... Adam's dagger... The one-eyed stag.
1968 B. Humphries Wonderful World Barry McKenzie I got this air hostess up to me sheilah trap—uncoiled the old one-eyed trouser snake.
1972 R. Wilson Playboy's Forbidden Words 212 One-Eyed Monster. The penis; a reference to the urethral hole.
1984 G. Vanderhaeghe My Present Age (1986) ii. 18 ‘Hey, I got something to show you baby. Wanna see a one-eyed pant snake?’
1998 Guardian (Nexis) 2 Feb. 7 In the grip of sexual desire we are all..liable to be blinded. And in the country of the blind the one-eyed trouser-snake is king.
2000 Z. Smith White Teeth (2001) vi. 141 Samad..would be able to massage one-eyed-Jack as vigorously as he liked and nothing would come out but air.
3.
a. Narrow-minded, prejudiced; having a blinkered outlook.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > belief > expressed belief, opinion > bias, prejudice > narrow-mindedness > [adjective]
narrowed1599
narrow-minded1611
narrow1612
small1619
narrow1622
tub-brained1634
narrow-souled1641
narrow-spirited1645
narrow-compassed1647
illiberal1649
cat-witted1672
stingy1694
little-minded1707
straitened1712
unenlarged1741
contracted1765
one-eyed1779
unliberalized1793
nippit1808
small-minded1811
narrow-brained1835
narrow visioned1853
thin-minded1862
narrow-gauge1872
one-track1900
narrow-gutted1903
tunnel-visioned1968
1779 H. B. Dudley Flitch of Bacon i. 10 Why, what think you of my bringing you together, for you to make a conquest of the old one-eyed dotard, (who, you say, can't see the length of his nose).
1816 S. T. Coleridge Statesman's Man. 53 If this one-eyed Experience does not seduce its worshipper into practical anachronisms.
1863 J. Brown Let. Mar. (1912) 206 I do believe the man thinks he is doing God service and is honest in his way, though vain and one-eyed to ludicrosity, as you have most thoroughly and delightfully shown.
1874 A. C. Swinburne Let. July (1959) II. 302 With all his rhetorical power, he [sc. J. A. Froude] seems to me (even apart from his one-eyed prepossession and palpable special pleading) but a shallow reader of character.
1918 Times Lit. Suppl. 2 May 207/1 The one-eyed preoccupations of the prover of a thesis.
1971 Austral. Seacraft June 4/2 It seems your correspondent is one-eyed so far as the southern part of Australia is concerned.
1992 N. Postman Technopoly i. 5 We are currently surrounded by throngs of zealous Theuths, one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo.
b. colloquial (originally British regional). Esp. of a town: small, inferior, inadequate, unimportant. Cf. one-horse adj. 2.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > goodness and badness > inferiority or baseness > inferior thing > [adjective]
salec1299
bastarda1348
sorry1372
slight1393
shrewd1426
singlec1449
backc1450
soberc1450
lesser1464
silly?a1500
starven1546
mockado1577
subaltern1578
bastardly1583
wooden1592
starved1604
perishing1605
starveling1611
minor1612
starvy1647
potsherd1655
low1727
la-la1800
waif1824
lathen1843
one-eyed1843
snide1859
bobbery1873
jerkwater1877
low-grade1878
shoddy1882
tinhorn1886
jerk1893
cheapie1898
shaganappi1900
buckeye1906
reach-me-down1907
pissy1922
crappy1928
cruddy1935
el cheapo1967
pound shop1989
the mind > attention and judgement > importance > unimportance > [adjective] > paltry, mean, or contemptible
unworthlyc1230
wretcha1250
seely1297
vilec1320
not worth a cress (kerse)1377
the value of a rushc1380
threadbarec1412
wretched1450
miserable?a1513
rascal1519
prettya1522
not worth a whistlea1529
pegrall1535
plack1539
pelting1540
scald1542
sleeveless1551
baggage1553
paltering1553
piddling1559
twopenny1560
paltry1565
rubbish1565
baggagely1573
pelfish1577
halfpenny1579
palting1579
baubling1581
three-halfpenny1581
pitiful1582
triobolar1585
squirting1589
not worth a lousea1592
hedge1596
cheap1597
peddling1597
dribbling1600
mean1600
rascally1600
three-farthingc1600
draughty1602
dilute1605
copper1609
peltry?a1610
threepenny1613
pelsy1631
pimping1640
triobolary1644
pigwidgeon1647
dustya1649
fiddling1652
puddlinga1653
insignificant1658
piteous1667
snotty1681
scrubbed1688
dishonourable1699
scrub1711
footy1720
fouty1722
rubbishing1731
chuck-farthing1748
rubbishy1753
shabby1753
scrubby1754
poxya1758
rubbishly1777
waff-like1808
trinkety1817
meanish1831
one-eyed1843
twiddling1844
measly1847
poking1850
picayunish1852
vild1853
picayune1856
snide1859
two-cent1859
rummagy1872
faddling1883
finicking1886
slushy1889
twopence halfpenny1890
jerk1893
pissy1922
crappy1928
two-bit1932
piddly1933
chickenshit1934
pissing1937
penny packet1943
farkakte1960
pony1964
gay1978
1843 Topogr. Statist. & Hist. Gazetteer Scotl. II. 803/1 Though the burgh is what a colloquial phrase calls ‘a one-eyed town’, it sends out sufficient radiations of road to the limited territory of the parish, and to places at a distance.
1863 Dundee Courier & Argus 24 Nov. They fancy that such a ‘one-eyed town’..can furnish the student of human nature in all its forms and phases with little worth observing and recapitulation.
1871 D. G. Rossetti Let. 28 Oct. (1967) III. 1021 A little hamlet called Kelmscott, the nearest town to which is Lechlade,—that being however but a ‘one-eyed’ town as the Yankees say.
1881 T. Hardy Laodicean III. vi. iv. 246 I shouldn't care for such a one-eyed benefit as that.
1887 W. D. Parish & W. F. Shaw Dict. Kentish Dial. 111 ‘That's a middlin' one-eyed place.’ ‘I can't make nothin' of these here one-eyed new-fashioned tunes they've took-to in church.’
1937 G. Heyer They found him Dead i. 19 I wasn't born to this humdrum life in a one-eyed town.
1947 E. Afr. Ann. 1946–7 101/2 Some had said it was a grand little town; others, a one-eyed hole!
1977 Times 14 May 8/7 In its somewhat one-eyed way, it [sc. Tobago] is among the loveliest..of all the Caribbean islands.
1996 M. Gilbert Boys i. 5 In this 'small one-eyed town', he later wrote, the two thousand Jews were the majority.
2010 B. Macintyre Operation Mincemeat xi. 144 From here the road, such as it was, went as far as Pongo, a one-eyed mining town built to service the Guggenheim mines.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > goodness and badness > wrongdoing > dishonesty > dishonest person > [adjective]
unjustc1400
bribing1530
unhonest1545
subornate1548
sinistrous1600
sinistruous1601
horse-fair1606
under-honest1609
left-handed1615
leer1631
dishonest1752
cross1819
one-eyed1833
crook1911
society > morality > moral evil > lack of principle or integrity > [adjective] > dishonest
manOE
unjustc1400
bribing1530
unhonest1545
makeshift1592
sinistrous1600
horse-fair1606
under-honest1609
dishonest1611
one-eyed1833
shystering1860
cross1882
crook1911
bent1914
fly-by-night1914
crookish1927
shyster1943
shonky1970
1833 Sketches & Eccentr. D. Crockett i. 24 In the slang of the backwoods, one swore that he would never be ‘one-eyed’.
Compounds
one-eyed cat n. Baseball (U.S. regional) = one-old-cat n. at one adj., n., and pron. Compounds 4.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > sport > types of sport or game > ball game > baseball > games similar to baseball > [noun]
baseball1748
pat-ball1775
town ball1813
stickball1824
rounders1828
roundball1834
feeder1844
one-old-cat1856
softball1867
one-eyed cat1908
vigoroc1930
slow-pitch1934
fast-pitch1939
stoop ball1941
fastball1943
lob ball1949
whiffle-ball1954
Wiffle ball1955
T-ball1962
1908 Sullivan (Indiana) Union 11 Mar. 1/4 We had town ball, one-eyed cat, and black man, games that called for vigorous exercise, if there wasn't much skill manifested.
1937 A. Wynn in J. F. Dobie & M. C. Boatright Straight Texas 231 Among the games played by the children and adolescents were..William Trimble-toe, base, blind-fold, one-eyed cat, [etc.].
1969 J. O'Connor Horse & Buggy West 83 Baseball games..were generally of the informal variety, such as One-Eyed Cat, with only a pitcher, a catcher, and a first baseman.
one-eyed monster n. a television set; (also) a computer.
ΚΠ
1958 Spectator 11 July 55/3 I can only..turn the face of the one-eyed monster..to the wall.
1980 Washington Post (Nexis) 1 June h1 He does not believe in throwing stones at the one-eyed monster of television on the grounds that it must be the cause of every societal problem and moral quiver in the land.
1997 Jrnl. Commerce (Nexis) 25 Feb. 2 b What you choose dictates how efficient and error-free your one-eyed monster will be... For most of us, the choice has narrowed to three operating systems.
Derivatives
one-ˈeyedness n. narrow-mindedness (figurative); (also) the condition of having only one eye.
ΚΠ
1846 Brit. & Foreign Med. Rev. Apr. 356 Mr. Martin notices the one-eyedness of honest folk, when giving a sanatory character of their own locality.
1890 Jrnl. Amer. Med. Assoc. 27 Dec. 925/1 In this way we understand why clubfoot is hereditary, while one-eyedness is not.
1921 G. B. Shaw Back to Methuselah p. li There is no reason to suspect Weismann of Sadism... It was a mere piece of one-eyedness; and it was Darwin who put out Weismann's humane and sensible eye.
1986 C. Kloos Yhawh's Combat with Sea ii. 182 The condition of one-eyedness—in which state he performed his miraculous deed—is the only datum we possess about Horatius.
1995 E. Törnqvist Between Stage & Screen ii. 117 The connection is even more obvious in the film, where only one of the eyes is wounded—to indicate Isak's mental one-eyedness.
2006 C. Matzke et al. Of Minstrelsy & Masks 197 It is here that the persistent critique of ‘one-eyedness’, of single perspectives, and the demand for a questioning audience in dialogue with the writer or speaker, is voiced most powerfully.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2004; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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adj.OE