blindfold
/ˈblʌɪn(d)fəʊld
/noun
A piece of cloth tied round the head to cover someone’s eyes.Other journalists have witnessed detainees ‘wearing only underwear and blindfolds, handcuffed and lying in the dirt 24 hours after their capture.’...
- It's 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning and a group of busy professional adults are standing around in a tennis court wearing blindfolds, arguing loudly and clutching a long piece of rope.
- However, there is evidence of the shameful goings on at Guantanamo Bay, where cameras have shown us cages not fit for animals, shackles, gags, hoods and blindfolds.
verb [with object]
Deprive (someone) of sight by tying a blindfold round their head: he was blindfolded and trussed up in a cupboard...
- Then they attempted a repeat of the 1970s hostage-style device, blindfolding foreigners in a ploy designed to intimidate troops out of the country.
- Police say five men abducted the driver while he was asleep in the cab, wrapping tape around his head and blindfolding him.
- The police found his body abandoned on a roadside with a red hankie blindfolding him.
adverb & adjective British
1With a blindfold covering the eyes: [as adverb]: the reporter was driven blindfold to meet the gangster...
- I'm going into it blindfold, but I love the script.
- Each year I ask my two children, Zoe, now 17, and Oliver, 15, to pick shares blindfold with a pin.
- He throws his knives blindfold, barely nicking his lovely target, inciting the pair to ever more reckless acts.
1.1(Of a game of chess) conducted without sight of board and pieces.In the Utut-Zhu game, the victory avenged Zhu's Sunday defeat when Utut overpowered her in two games of their blindfold chess exhibition....
- Finally, let's see how Leko ended up having his queen completely gift-wrapped in his blindfold game against Piket.
- The blindfold game ended in a surprisingly short draw, after Kramnik had equalised with black in the Lasker variation of the Queen's Gambit.
1.2 [as adverb] Used to convey that something is done with great ease and confidence: he missed putts that he would normally hole blindfold...
- Luckily Stefan can ski his way through these trees blindfold.
- It got to the point that I could make them blindfold, in about four minutes with no recipe, because I did it every single day.
- Chris, however was so in tune with his bike I'm sure he could have ridden blindfold had I asked him to.
Origin
Mid 16th century: alteration, by association with fold1, of blindfeld, past participle of obsolete blindfell 'strike blind, blindfold', from Old English geblindfellan (see blind, fell2).