blindness

From Middle English blyndnes, blyndnesse, from Old English blindnes (“blindness”), equivalent to blind +‎ -ness.

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blindness (usually uncountable, plural blindnesses)

1. The condition of being blind; unable to see.
2. (figuratively) Want of intellectual or moral discernment; mental darkness; ignorance, heedlessness.
   • 1976, Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

     A tormenting hunger shuddered through her and she wished she could put aside the power. Oh, to be as others were — blind in that safest of all blindnesses, living only the hypnoidal half-life into which birth-shock precipitated most humans.

3. (obsolete) concealment

• ablepsy (rare)
• cecity
• sightlessness

• colour blindness, color blindness
• deaf-blindness, deafblindness
• snow blindness
• stereoblindness

• anosmia
• deafness

• blindness in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• “blindness”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.