Brewer's: Wall-eyed

properly means “withered-eyed.” Persons are wall-eyed when the white is unusually large, and the sight defective; hence Shakespeare has wall-eyed wrath, wall-eyed slave, etc. When King John says, “My rage was blind, ” he virtually says his “wrath was wall-eyed.” (Saxon, hwelan, to wither. The word is often written whall-eyed, or whallied, from the verb whally.)

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