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turn a blind eye to
Deliberately overlook, ignore, as in She decided to turn a blind eye to her roommate's goings-on. This expression is believed to come from the siege of Copenhagen (1801), in which Lord Horatio Nelson, second in command of the English fleet, was ordered to withdraw but pretended not to see the flagship's signals to do so by putting his glass to the eye that had been blinded in an earlier battle. His attack led to a major victory. Also see turn a deaf ear.
Example Sentences
While Flanagan understands humanity’s penchant for complacency in the face of chaos, his script does little to elucidate the reasons people turn a blind eye to their fellow humans’ suffering, much less pose any solutions.
Department of Education provided a statement from McMahon that said the Biden administration’s “policies placed racial equity quotas over student safety — encouraging schools to turn a blind eye to poor or violent behavior in the name of inclusion.”
A judge sanctioned state corrections officials for intentionally destroying evidence in that suit, writing that he “will not turn a blind eye to the Defendants’ blatant arrogance and flippant response to their legal obligations.”
"Israel actually gave more than a year to the international community to clean out this organisation, but it didn't. It tried to sweep it under the rug and turn a blind eye to breaching the law of neutrality," Haskell says.
Wendy Park, an attorney at the center, said “communities in the Uinta Basin and the Gulf Coast will suffer the most from this oil railroad, while oil companies enrich themselves at the expense of the environment and people’s health. It’s disgraceful the railroad’s backers want federal agencies to turn a blind eye to those harms.”
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