[UN-1 10, 5 d. Cf. OE. unʓeséonde not yet seeing, MHG. unsëhende (G. unsehend) in sense 2.]
† 1. Unseen, invisible. Obs.
a. 1300. Cursor M., 25010. Wit þis word ‘heuen’ þou vnderstand Al gastli thing and vnseand.
2. Not seeing; lacking sight.
Freq. in recent use, esp. with eyes.
1591. Shaks., Two Gent., IV. iv. 209. Else by Ioue, I vow, I should haue scratch’d out your vnseeing eyes. Ibid. (c. 1600), Sonn., xliii. How would thy shadowes forme, forme happy show,… When to vn-seeing eyes thy shade shines so?
1795. Southey, Joan of Arc, IV. 66. With a full eye, that of the circling throng And of the visible world unseeing, seem’d Fix’d upon objects seen by none beside.
1819. Monthly Mag., XLVIII. 33. As one who, sever’d from the maid he loves, Rolls an unseeing eye on all beside.
a. 1830. Ld. Cockburn, Mem. (1856), 17. But the garden!… unseen and unseeing, it was a world of its own.
1873. Miss Braddon, Lucius Davoren, I. 57. He looked at his friend’s face with blank unseeing eyes.
1888. D. C. Murray, Weaker Vessel, ii. After an apparently unseeing glance at one of its pages.
3. With object: Without seeing.
1632. Lithgow, Trav., X. 445. I haue gone eighteene leagues,… vnseeing house or Village.
1798. Southey, Joan of Arc (ed. 2), I. I. 124. I sat in silence,… unheeding and unseeing all Around me.
Hence Unseeingly adv.
1893. Marie Corelli, Barabbas, xxxiii. Barabbas went out, wandering almost unseeingly in the open street.
