{"id":15613,"date":"2018-05-23T18:05:05","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T17:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=15613"},"modified":"2018-05-23T18:05:05","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T17:05:05","slug":"blundering-about-eyes-closed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=15613","title":{"rendered":"Blundering about, eyes closed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/wink.gif\" width=\"208\" height=\"208\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 20px 50px;\" alt=\"Wink emoji\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I learnt today that the Swedish word <em>blunda<\/em> means to shut one&#8217;s eyes, to keep one&#8217;s eyes shut, to refuse to see something; to pretend not to know about, or to ignore. It comes from the Old Norse word <em>blunda<\/em> (to shut the eyes, to doze) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/blunda\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Related words include <em>blund<\/em> (good sleep, wink), <em>blund for<\/em> (to wink at, turn a blind eye to), and Jon\/John Blund, a character from folklore who brings good sleep and dreams to children, known as the sandman in English.<\/p>\n<p>In Icelandic <em>blunda<\/em> means to doze.<\/p>\n<p>Wink is also linked to sleep in English &#8211; you might take forty winks, or not sleep a wink, which might make you blunder about.<\/p>\n<p>The English word <strong>blunder<\/strong> comes from the same root, via the Middle English <em>blunder, blonder<\/em> (disturbance, strife), and <em>blonden, blanden<\/em> (to mix; mix up); and <em>blunden<\/em> (to stagger; stumble), from the Old Norse <em>blunda<\/em> [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/blunder\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blunder<\/strong> is also a Swedish word meaning blooper, gaffe, trip, bloomer and blunder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I learnt today that the Swedish word blunda means to shut one&#8217;s eyes, to keep one&#8217;s eyes shut, to refuse to see something; to pretend not to know about, or to ignore. It comes from the Old Norse word blunda (to shut the eyes, to doze) [source]. Related words include blund (good sleep, wink), blund [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,124,10,36,67,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-icelandic","category-language","category-old-norse","category-swedish","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}