How to Use bleary in a Sentence

bleary

adjective
  • She looked at me with bleary eyes.
  • Looking on were a small cadre of bleary-eyed staffers and floor staff.
    — Ryan Nobles, Ted Barrett and Manu Raju, CNN, 28 May 2021
  • She was clad in a sweatshirt and bleary from the early hour.
    — Jeff Ernsthausen, ProPublica, 23 Mar. 2026
  • Gennaro, his eyes still red and bleary, has come home with track marks on his arms.
    — Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 28 Oct. 2024
  • The kids filed in right at game time, bleary-eyed but excited.
    — Nick Hoppe, SFChronicle.com, 2 July 2018
  • One boy wiped the bleary eyes of his baby sibling, just woken up from a nap.
    — Aurora Almendral, New York Times, 2 Apr. 2020
  • His eyes are bleary; a blurred clock raises its hands toward midnight.
    — Brendan Fitzgerald, Longreads, 10 Aug. 2020
  • Her eyes were bleary, and her cigarette held on to her lip like a magic trick.
    — Washington Post, 8 Nov. 2021
  • Alsop gently roused the piece — its rustle of chimes and bleary strings.
    — Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 1 July 2024
  • Though tired and bleary-eyed, Jack made it to Rebecca’s show.
    — The Washington Post, The Mercury News, 15 Mar. 2017
  • Underneath my soaked baseball cap, my eyes are dark and bleary, my face stubbled and worn.
    — Gary Greenberg, Harper's Magazine, 23 Oct. 2024
  • Whether any of them will pass muster with bleary-eyed Grammy voters is anyone’s guess.
    — Jon Burlingame, Variety, 20 Oct. 2022
  • Any bleary eyes from the night before were gone as this collection kicked like a strong shot of caffeine.
    — Alice Tate, Marie Claire, 20 Feb. 2013
  • Dutcher gave a brief speech to his bleary-eyed players and motioned to the net on one of the baskets.
    — Mark Zeigler, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 Mar. 2021
  • Sun or not, bleary-eyed race winner Alex Bowman needed his shades.
    — Dan Gelston, Orlando Sentinel, 30 Apr. 2022
  • In the picture, Gomez stares bleary-eyed into the camera, wrapped in a blanket.
    — Neha Prakash, Allure, 9 Oct. 2019
  • Half an hour before showtime, a bus pulled up and out straggled the bleary-looking Arkestra.
    — Literary Hub, 13 Feb. 2026
  • The passengers stepped out bleary-eyed, clutching their luggage, pets and young children.
    — Washington Post, 16 Mar. 2022
  • For a week and a half, baseball was at the center of the sports world, the subject of every morning’s bleary-eyed talk.
    — Robert O'Connell, The Atlantic, 2 Nov. 2017
  • He was surrounded by his boys from Alabama, trading cracks with a bleary grin.
    — Nick Stern, Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2025
  • The benefit of an extra hour of sleep becomes more valuable than an extra hour of (bleary-eyed) work.
    — Adam H. Beasley, miamiherald, 30 Aug. 2017
  • On the eighth floor of the Strand, the two sauna ladies look bleary-eyed, but tickled, in their white gowns and hospital shoes.
    — Dean Kuipers, SPIN, 8 Jan. 2023
  • And maybe soon, the guy who makes your Triple Layer Nachos some bleary midnight.
    — Sophie Alexander, Bloomberg.com, 12 May 2020
  • The next day, Bharara addressed the bleary-eyed staff of the Southern District.
    — Andrew Rice, Daily Intelligencer, 3 Oct. 2017
  • For the rest of us, technology can help overcome that bleary-eyed and dreamy-headed feeling to get us out of bed on time.
    — David Nield, Popular Science, 25 Sep. 2019
  • Still bleary-eyed, Robinson sings children’s songs as Ariana begs for more.
    — Connor Letourneau, SFChronicle.com, 24 Nov. 2019
  • Like wiping your eyes after a bleary-eyed glimpse of daylight in the morning, the telescope still needs to adjust its focus.
    — Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 Feb. 2022
  • After the game, Redick wore the disappointment — his eyes bleary, a Dodgers cap pulled down over part of his face.
    — Dan Woike, latimes.com, 30 Apr. 2017
  • Green on green on green on green, all of this chlorophyll inducing a bleary anesthetic—or Andrew thought so.
    — David Gilbert, The New Yorker, 4 June 2017
  • Crying is par for the course with the Ohioan, who was often seen bleary-eyed during his tenure as a congressman.
    — Sarah Brookbank, Cincinnati.com, 20 Nov. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bleary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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