English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
If I have a sentence like: ... was an old, ugly, half-blind ...
Does it mean 50% vision in both eyes? Or does it mean complete blindness in any one eye? Or does it not really mean anything - just poor eyesight? We were discussing this sentence in class today and this question came up, it's a serious question though it sounds stupid.
It means "poor vision in both eyes" or "generally poor vision".
"Half" doesn't mean "50%" here, it just means "significantly on the way to being". Similarly, "half dead" means "badly injured" (or perhaps just extremely tired, as an exaggeration), "half asleep" means "feeling very sleepy, or perhaps dozing but still conscious".
If someone had lost an eye, but could see well through the remaining one, you wouldn't call them "half-blind": they can see almost as well as someone with two eyes - the only difference is a smaller field of vision.
If someone had lost an eye, and had poor vision in the remaining one, you could still describe them as "half blind", but you could also say "He only had one eye, and that was half-blind.".
