ppl. a. [f. BLUR v. + -ED1.]
1. Smeared with or as with ink, as when wet writing is rubbed or brushed.
1553. Dk. Northumb., in Four C. Eng. Lett., 22. To whom I have also sent my blurred letters.
1660. W. Secker, Nonsuch Prof., 189. There is no removing of blots from the paper by laying upon it a blurred finger.
1790. Burke, Fr. Rev., Wks. 1842, V. 167. Paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man.
1875. Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. xvii. 625. The writing of the fourteenth century is coarse and blurred.
2. Stained, sullied, befouled.
1708. Motteux, Rabelais, IV. xii. A Country all blurr’d and blotted.
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, VIII. 362. His cheeks all blurred with tears and naughtiness.
3. Made indistinct and dim like blurred writing.
1701. Lond. Gaz., No. 3746/4. The W. a little blurr’d.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes (1850), 132/2. A blurred lithograph of Washington.
1878. Black, Green Past., vii. 54. I don’t know … what blurred image or idol he had in his mind.
Hence Blurredness.
1864. Furnivall, in Reader, 22 Oct., 511/2. The frequent blurredness [of the type] and missing of dots and strokes in this reduction.
