Also: Close one’s eyes to something
Meaning of Idiom ‘Turn a Blind Eye’
To turn a blind eye to something means to choose to ignore or overlook it; to refuse to acknowledge something, especially something improper or illegal; to pretend not to notice something. 1Ammer, Christine. <a href=”http://amzn.to/2uay3ga”>American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms</a>. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.,2Heacock, Paul. <a href=”http://amzn.to/2sR9fpD”>Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms</a>]. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.,3Collins Cobuild. Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary. HarperCollins, 2007.,4Jarvie, Gordon. [http://amzn.to/2uaI2lm Bloomsbury Dictionary of Idioms]. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.
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Examples Of Use
“I’m going to turn a blind eye this time but don’t let it happen again!”
“The DOJ has been turning a blind eye to this official’s crimes but now he’s gone too far.”
“The police are choosing to close their eyes to the ongoing corruption inside their department.”
“No longer can we turn a blind eye to health concerns. The current pandemic affects us all.”
Origin
The original version of this idiom combined an earlier variation ‘turn the blind eye’ with the companion idiom ‘turn the deaf ear.’ Turn the blind eye and the deaf ear was in use by the 1600s but ‘turn the deaf ear’ may have originated first. Its use alone is seen frequently in print during the 1600s. By the 1800s, turn the blind eye was being used alone.
The modern idiom may have been popularized by a story about the 1801 Siege of Copenhagen, in which Lord Horatio Nelson, who was second in command of the British fleet, had been ordered to withdraw but pretended that he did not see the withdrawal signal from the flagship. Nelson had been blinded in one eye in a previous war with France so he purposely placed the telescope on his blind eye saying, “I see no signal.” He went on to attack and achieve a major victory. Later, he is said to have quipped to his commander, “I have only one eye. I have a right to be blind sometimes.”
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