Latest sighting of "hairy eyeball"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Thanks, Ben. The sense is overwhelmingly a look of suspicion or hostility, but not in every case. Perh. the phrase sometimes refers to a wink.

  I can't prove it though.

  JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: Latest sighting of "hairy eyeball"
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On 6/28/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> 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.

Sorry, I meant her 16-year-old *sister*.

> 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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