bleary

bleary — adjective

1. describing eyes that look red, watery, and unfocused — the way a person's eyes a

1.adjectiveC1
Definition

describing eyes that look red, watery, and unfocused — the way a person's eyes appear after very little sleep or right after waking up.

Example

Marcus rubbed his bleary eyes and reached for the morning coffee.

bleary + eyes after waking up

The night nurse stared at the screen with bleary eyes after her twelve-hour shift.

bleary eyes from fatigue and overwork

Common collocations
  • bleary eyes
  • bleary-eyed
  • look bleary
  • rub one's bleary eyes
  • bleary from sleep
  • bleary with fatigue
Synonyms
  • bleary-eyed

    compound form used to describe the whole person, not just the eyes

  • blurry

    general lack of sharpness in vision or images, not tied to tiredness

  • watery

    highlights tears in the eyes but not necessarily fatigue

  • groggy

    describes a foggy, slow feeling after sleep, covering the whole body, not just the eyes

Antonyms
  • clear

    of vision or eyes, the opposite of unfocused

  • alert

    of a person, the opposite of sleepy and unfocused

Grammar Patterns

bleary + eyes

bleary-eyed (compound adjective)

Usage Note

Almost always paired with 'eyes' or used as the compound 'bleary-eyed'. The word describes how the eyes look from outside, plus the foggy vision the tired person feels. It is rarely used to describe other body parts or non-eye objects.

Common Mistakes

I felt bleary after work.
I felt bleary-eyed after work.
'bleary' on its own normally needs 'eyes' as the noun; for a person, use 'bleary-eyed'.
The window looked bleary in the rain.
The window looked blurry in the rain.
for fuzzy outlines of objects, use 'blurry' or 'hazy'; 'bleary' is tied to tired eyes.

Word family

  • bleary-eyed
    adjectiveC1
  • blearily
    adverbC2
  • bleariness
    nounC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

All four words describe a kind of unclear or unfocused state, but they pick out different things. 'Bleary' is the most specific: it describes eyes that look red and unfocused because the person is tired or has just woken up. 'Blurry' is much broader and applies to anything seen or shown without sharp edges — a photo, a window, distant letters — and is not tied to tiredness. 'Groggy' describes the whole person feeling slow and unsteady after sleep, medication, or alcohol, rather than how the eyes look. 'Watery' focuses on tears or moisture in the eyes from cold, allergies, or emotion, not necessarily fatigue. So you might say: 'Marcus had bleary eyes and a groggy head after the long night, while the rain made the streetlights look blurry, and his watery eyes from the cold air did not help.'

bleary ↗blurrygroggywatery ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

Phrases

  • bleary-eyed
  • look bleary
  • rub bleary eyes

Prepositions

  • bleary from
  • bleary with

Etymology

GermanicMiddle EnglishEnglish

'Bleary' comes from the older English word 'blear', meaning to make the eyes watery or sore, recorded in Middle English from around the 1300s. The form 'bleary' added the '-y' ending to turn it into an adjective describing how such eyes look. Related words appear in old Germanic languages with the sense of dim sight or watery eyes, which fits the modern meaning of eyes that cannot see clearly because of tiredness or tears.