Squint

Rather than attempting to make Nashville look attractive, Steve and a ragtag film crew travelled around the world, filming the accompanying videos in exotic locales, including the grave of Lucky the leprechaun.

Steve Taylor's award winning record label. Taylor and staff had the vision, guts, and determination to bring Sixpence None the Richer to the mainstream after years of toiling in obscurity. Squint marketed the song Kiss Me to radio stations sucessfully, make it one of the top songs of 1999.

The label is also home to Burlap to Cashmere, Chevelle, Waterdeep and LA Symphony. Previously, they had the foresight to release the Insyderz album Skalleluia

Beside the definitions Webster1913 gives, squint also means 'to look or peer with eyes partly closed'. Specifically, squinting means you have the muscles around your eyes tensed, to narrow them to a slit (as if looking at a bright light). If your eyelids are simply relaxed and drooping, you are either sleepy-eyed or a victim of ptosis.

In my experience this is the most commonly used definition; it seems to be used in both the US and the UK. I was rather surprised to find that Webster1913 does not also give the only definition of squint that I have ever used...

Gritchka reports that the Oxford English Dictionary gives the 'nearly closed eyes' definition as originating at almost the same time (circa the 1600s) as the one Webster1913 gives. If you have any more information about this word, please /msg me.

I have found one other definition for squint that Webster1913 doesn't give:
"An inclination towards some object, course, or procedure. TREND, BENT".

Why does squinting help you see more clearly?

In normal vision, you can focus clearly from five or ten centimeters in front of the face on off to infinity. With corrected vision, glasses, contact lenses, or what have you, this close focal length can be a lot more variable, especially after aging does further damage to close vision. Uncorrected nearsightedness is even worse, with both up-close focus and far-away focus broken -- leaving the whoever is seeing with only a small interval of distance in which things are clear.

From photography, we know that to increase the depth of focus, we must decrease the diameter of the aperture which allows in light, i.e. go down an f-stop or two. Squinting is the same principle at work in vision. When you close your eyes to a great enough degree that less light is allowed in than through whatever your pupil diameter, you've effectively stopped down your eyes' lenses. Thus, you can see things both closer than normal and (in nearsightedness) farther away.

Notably, because it is entirely an optical phenomenon, squinting will not do any permanent damage to your vision, though doing enough of it may well give you a wretched headache. Also, some guardians of ophthalmological knowledge suggest that it is wrong wrong wrong to call this a squint, because that piece of jargon is reserved for describing lazy eye. They would prefer you to call this a narrowing of the palpebral aperture. Unfortunately for those suckers, English has moved on without them.

A rather rare insulting definition of "squint" is someone who is lazy and does not leave bed except for eating and bathroom breaks.

This insult is used several times in the John Wayne movie "The Quiet Man".

For example: "If you passed the pub as fast as you pass the chapel, you'd be better off, you little squint." --Mary Kate Danaher (played by Maureen O'Hara).

Squint (?), a. [Cf. D. schuinte a slope, schuin, schuinisch, sloping, oblique, schuins slopingly. Cf. Askant, Askance, Asquint.]

1.

Looking obliquely. Specifically (Med.), not having the optic axes coincident; -- said of the eyes. See Squint, n., 2.

2.

Fig.: Looking askance. "Squint suspicion." Milton.

© Webster 1913

Squint, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Squinted; p. pr. & vb. n. Squinting.]

1.

To see or look obliquely, asquint, or awry, or with a furtive glance.

Some can squint when they will.
Bacon.

2. (Med.)

To have the axes of the eyes not coincident; -- to be cross-eyed.

3.

To deviate from a true line; to run obliquely.

© Webster 1913

Squint, v. t.

1.

To turn to an oblique position; to direct obliquely; as, to squint an eye.

2.

To cause to look with noncoincident optic axes.

He . . . squints the eye, and makes the harelid.
Shak.

© Webster 1913

Squint, n.

1.

The act or habit of squinting.

2. (Med.)

A want of coincidence of the axes of the eyes; strabismus.

3. (Arch.)

Same as Hagioscope.

© Webster 1913

Squint, v. i.

To have an indirect bearing, reference, or implication; to have an allusion to, or inclination towards, something.

Yet if the following sentence means anything, it is a squinting toward hypnotism.
The Forum.

© Webster 1913