Latest sighting of "hairy eyeball"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 6/28/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Talking head on Fox News:
>
>   "Whatever happened to the hairy eyeball, that look of disapproval our parents used to intimidate us with?"
>
>   "Hairy eyeball" is in HDAS from 1963. Is this beatable?

1961 _Galveston (Tex.) Daily News_ 7 Nov. 4/6 With her everything is
boys-boys-boys. She's really educated me. She was telling me about a
boy looking at her and she said, "He gave me the hairy eyeball." That
meant he liked her.

This appeared in Earl Wilson's syndicated column. He's quoting Carol
Burnett, in turn quoting her 16-year-old daughter Christine, who was
going to school in Mendham, NJ.

HDAS says it's "a glance, usu. of suspicion or hostility, made with
partially lowered eyelids." This cite would seem to lack the usual
"suspicion or hostility," unless of course it's understood as part of
the oppositional pigtails-in-the-inkwell behavior of teenage boys.


--Ben Zimmer

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