Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. complete, utter.

1895		E. Townsend Chimmie Fadden Explains 122: Dey is wonders, blind, staggerin wonders, in dere wheel make-up!
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Feb. 14/2: ‘I’m only goin’ as fur as Newcastle,’ replied one, and ‘I’m goin’ the whole blinded way,’ said another.
1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 July 17/1: With milk and flour and a few drops of essence of lemon the product was voted a blanky blank blind splendid ‘bloo mong’.
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 67: ‘Strike me perpendicular!’ he says, a-takin’ off his coat all in a flare and fluster, and workin’ hisself up into a blind white paddy.
1926		E. Walrond Tropic Death (1972) 42: Five hundred pounds! Ev’y blind cent!
1934		‘Maxwell Grant’ ‘Murder Marsh’ in Shadow Oct. 🌐 Blind luck saved the ex-convict. Luke thrust a hand upward. Pure chance enabled him to grip The Shadow’s wrist.
1949		H. Miller Sexus (1969) 13: We went into a blind fuck, with the cab lurching and careering.

2. a negative intensifier, e.g. not a blind bit of use, not a blind word, not take a blind bit of notice.

1908		Lancs. Eve. Post 9 Mar. 2/5: Mr Hunt asked what ‘the blind, blue blazes’ was the use of our continuing the present unfair fiscal system.
1911		E. Dyson ‘The Fickle Dolly Hopgood’ in Benno and Some of the Push 63: ‘What,’ cried the packer, ‘has she given yeh brusher?’ Clinker wagged his round head confidently. ‘No blinded fear,’ he said.
1938		J. Curtis They Drive by Night 79: Come all this bleeding way they had and he’d hardly said a blind word.
1943		R. Llewellyn None But the Lonely Heart 285: Nobody was taking a blind bit of notice.
1947		J. Maclaren-Ross Of Love And Hunger 138: Smiler never gave me a blind bit of help.
1958		A. Sillitoe Sat. Night and Sun. Morning 67: But nobody took a blind bit of notice of him.
1962		F. Norman Guntz 80: Not really taking a blind bit of notice.
1978		P. Theroux Picture Palace 325: They [...] were not paying the blindest bit of attention to my pictures.
1983		J. Sullivan ‘Thicker than Water’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] It doesn’t mean a blind bit of difference!
1998		I. Welsh Filth 202: Nae cunt takes a blind bit ay notice ay her.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 120: ‘Like drying you out would make a blind bit of difference’.
2021		L. McInerney Rules of Revelation 330: ‘My son doesn’t tell me anything [...] and doesn’t pay a blind bit of notice to anything I tell him’.

3. (bingo) the round numbers from 20 to 80 in multiples of 10, e.g. blind 30, blind 20 [the 0 on the end].

1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 122: 10, 20, etc., ‘Blind Ten,’ ‘Blind Twenty,’ etc.
1943		M. Harrison Reported Safe Arrival 85: Twenty and all multiples of ten, except ninety, are always prefixed with the word ‘Blind.’ Thus: ‘Blind Forty’.
2001		J. Burkardt ‘The Bingo Code’ Wordplay 🌐 20: blind 20.