turn a blind eye
Formsturns a blind eye, turning a blind eye, turned a blind eye
- 1To deliberately ignore or refuse to acknowledge something improper or unpleasant, choosing to look the other way instead of acting on it.
Like a referee who glances away at the exact moment a player breaks the rules.
Inspectors who turn a blind eye to violations put the whole public at risk.
She turned a blind eye to her brother's growing debts for years.
Similarignore, overlook, disregard, condone
Oppositeacknowledge, confront, address
Note
An idiom of willed not-seeing, often traced to Horatio Nelson at the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. Yet John Norris was already urging readers in 1698 to "turn the deaf Ear, and the blind Eye" to worldly vanities, and Martha Wilmot pairs a blind eye with a deaf ear again in 1823. What is ignored follows to: turn a blind eye to the mischief. Wink and connive are close neighbors; connive adds complicity.
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Origin
The phrase probably comes from the idea of a person looking toward something but not seeing it, as if their eyes were blind. It is often linked to a story about Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was blind in one eye and supposedly held his telescope to it to ignore an order during the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. However, this is not the true source, since the Oxford English Dictionary records uses dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries.