ears peeled

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/24/2010 08:32 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:

>On Jan 24, 2010, at 4:41 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:
>
>
>>Just this afternoon a friend promised he "would keep his ears peeled."
>
>moderate number of hits on this and variants of it.  it's a natural
>extension of keep/have eyes [or an eye] peeled/skinned ...

Just as a natural extension of the TV person's "have a look" is "have
a listen".  (Oof, from this corner.)

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org