Ophthalmology

The word on this list an English speaker is most likely to misread is blenden. It looks like « to blend » and has nothing to do with mixing: it means to dazzle, to hit the eye with more light than it can cope with. Die Sonne blendet is the low sun on a windscreen, vom Gegenverkehr geblendet is what a driver says after an oncoming car kept its full beam on, and blendempfindlich describes the patient who reaches for sunglasses on a grey afternoon — often an early sign of a clouding lens. Read it as « blend » and a sentence about glare becomes one about colours running into each other, which on an eye ward is a different complaint altogether. The better anchor is English « blind »: blenden is the German verb made from blind, and it names what light does in the moment before you cannot see.