Give Someone the Hairy Eyeball

Hi there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Tatiana Hemrich, and I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.

Welcome, Tatiana. What can we do for you?

So I’m kind of curious. It’s come up more recently, this thing that I have said, I think, my whole life.

I’m originally from D.C., where it didn’t seem to cause too many confused looks, but here in San Antonio, I really get a, what is wrong with this person?

So the phrase that I’m referring to is hairy eyeball.

And so I usually use it in terms of like, you know, that person’s giving me the hairy eyeball.

And it could be either I’m doing something they think is unusual or maybe someone is just questioning what I’m doing.

Or they’re just giving me like the New York once over, but just, you know, with the hairy eyeball expression.

Oh, hairy eyeball, thank you for doing the Johnny Appleseed work of spreading it throughout Texas.

That’s important.

But it’s been around since at least the 1960s.

And what’s interesting to me is that the first use that we know of in print was by Carol Burnett.

She was very young.

She was kind of early on in her career.

She’d established herself and had a name.

And she was being talked to by a gossip columnist.

And she was talking about not understanding the slang of her younger sister, who was 16.

And she quotes her younger sister as saying, he gave me the hairy eyeball.

That meant he liked her.

So the hairy eyeball, at least to Carol Burnett, meant something different.

It’s possible, since the whole premise of this is that Carol doesn’t understand her younger sister’s slang, that Carol got it wrong accidentally or got it wrong on purpose.

We don’t really know.

But now it does mean that you’re squinty-eyed at somebody.

Just imagine your eyelashes kind of occluding your eyeball.

They’re kind of in the way.

The hairy eyeball is a lot of eyelash and very little eyeball, right?

Squinting suspiciously at somebody.

It pops up here and there in literature and newspapers.

It’s never been all that common.

It’s kind of, I would call it performance slang.

You use it in a knowing way because it’s so evocative.

It’s not throwaway slang.

It’s just kind of casually unremarked upon.

If someone says the hairy eyeball, people notice.

So the hair in this case is the eyelashes.

Yeah, it’s the eyelashes.

Although the idea of a hairy eyeball seems really gross.

I know.

The first time I heard it, I thought.

And I think that’s why I would get the questioning looks like hairy eyeball.

I never even thought about the actual eyelashes.

You would get the hairy eyeball for using the term hairy eyeball.

There are a ton of eyeball-related terms like this in cultures around the world.

I’m thinking of the way that people, well, gestures.

People pull their lower eyelid down.

I believe we’ve talked about that before.

Buckeye.

The buckeye.

And there’s also the stink eye, which I believe originates in Hawaii, which is very similar to the hairy eyeball.

You give someone a distinct eye.

You’re showing them your displeasure with a sharp look.

Very interesting.

I like the Carol Burnett reference.

I am a fan of hers and used to watch her when I was younger.

Right.

And she has eyelashes that go on for days.

So I love picturing her now that you’ve brought this to our attention.

Tatiana, thank you so much for calling.

Thank you very much.

No, thank you so much.

It’s been quite a pleasure.

Thank you.

Take care.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Carol was 27 when she was quoted in this newspaper article.

Oh, my.

She had yet to reach her heyday, but she was well on her way.

She established herself early and had a reputation as the wild comedian who’d do anything just to get a great laugh.

Oh, I know.

So now I’m going to stop thinking about her earlobes and start thinking about her eyelashes.

Very good.

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