the.com/sightlessness
Not darkness — the absence of light to even be dark.
means The condition of being unable to see, whether total or partial, due to loss or lack of vision.
from Built from 'sight' plus the Old English suffix '-less' (meaning 'without') plus '-ness' (turning a quality into a noun). 'Sight' itself traces back to Old English 'sihð' or 'gesiht', rooted in the ancient Germanic verb for 'see' — the same deep root that gives us 'see' and 'show'. So the word is a plain, honest stack of parts: without the power to see, made into a noun you can hold.
- not blindness
- blindness is the condition, this is the state of lacking sight
- common misuse
- people picture black, but there is no visual at all
- root
- sight plus less, bluntly literal, no euphemism attempted
- other senses
- often sharpen to compensate, not by magic, by necessity