The condition of being color-blind; a visual defect, consisting in inability (greater or less) to discriminate between different colors, or shades of color.
This optical defect was first described by Dalton in 1794 (Mem. Lit. & Phil. Soc. Manchester, V. 28), and was for a considerable time known scientifically as Daltonism. The accuracy of the words color-blind and color-blindness has often been impugned; in scientific use achromatopsy occurs; J. Dixon, Diseases of the Eye (1859), 279 suggested the term acritochromacy (ἀκριτο-χρωματία), with its adjective acritochromatic.
1854. Mackenzie, Dis. Eye (ed. 4), 946. Colour-blindness has been detected much oftener in males than in females.
1855. Bain, Senses & Int., II. ii. 3 (1864), 236. Colour-blindness has been known to exist with reference to green, but as yet, not to violet.
1876. Foster, Phys. (1879), III. ii. 491. The most common form of colour-blindness is that of persons unable to distinguish green and red from each other.
b. fig.
1888. Pall Mall Gaz., 19 Dec., 4/2. The Liberal Papers, instead of imitating the political colour-blindness of the Unionists … frankly admit that black is black.
