Of Wool and Vision

"Drawn fleece doth his vision occlude."

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Nobody likes to be fooled. It makes us feel...well...foolish. So we've come up with alternative ways of saying "I got suckered". One of the more bizarre expressions is, "He had the wool pulled over his eyes."

Not sure if this refers to raw wool, fresh from the sheep, being dragged in a massive clump over someone's eye sockets or if it's meant to be more figurative. Perhaps the wool is woven into a blanket and thrown over the person's head. Modern textile manufacturing produces scores of  fabrics for making suitable blindfolds without any wool at all. A modernized version of this classic expression might be, "He had the cotton/polyester swatch pulled over his eyes."

And that sounds better than, "He's a dope."