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Chris -- 2025-05-10
When you’re hit from a direction you don’t expect, as if from a side you’re blind on, you’ve been blindsided. The OED gives its earliest citation from 1968: “H. HIGDON Pro Football, USA 305 Usually it is the quarterback who gets blind-sided as he is about to pass.”
Because this expression has to do with vision, I suppose it’s natural some people think the word is “blindsighted,” as if your opponent were blundering into you in the dark.
Examples:
“mace was blindsighted by anakin when he cut off his arm and then sidious through him out the window!”
Star Wars United.com
http://www.starwarsunited.com/forum/vie … hp?p=18123
“Unfortunately, I was blindsighted given a decent severance check and asked to resign no explanation given other than “cultural” differences.”
City-Data.com
http://www.city-data.com/forum/tennesse … lcome.html
“I never got to find out. Out of nowhere I was blindsighted by this random lunatic who wanted to see Mrs. Henderson Presents instead.”
Courterblog
http://courterblog.blogspot.com/2006_06 … chive.html
My clever wife suggests that St. Paul was blindsighted by God on the road to Damascus.
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I ran across this one today again. It occurs to me that in many of its usages it shares with hindsight the notion that one should have seen the danger coming. Blending of blind with hindsight is very probably an important part of this one.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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