Hairy Eyeball

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Paula calling from Indianapolis.

Hiya, Paula. Welcome.

Well, thank you.

I have a question about the expression hairy eyeball. It was an expression that my brother used frequently when he was getting that look from my parents, that they were giving him the hairy eyeball. And I thought it was specific to my generation. And at work the other day, a young lady used it. And I looked at her in surprise, and I said, where did you hear that? And she had heard it from her father, who is presumably about my age. So I’m wondering how wide the usage is, how it originated.

I have an idea of why that was the expression.

Oh, well, let’s hear that idea. When a person is giving somebody the hairy eyeball, their head is often tilted down, and then they’re looking up at the person, so they’re actually almost looking through their eyebrows.

Oh, I see. Right, because I actually do that look to my son, and he has started to imitate me, but it’s because I’m looking over the top of my glasses. Can you imagine a 17-month-old doing that?

Can you frown that him better over the top of your glasses?

Yeah, well, my wife says that the two of us, me and my son, have the same scowl. It’s definitely the hairy eyeball, though I know exactly the look you’re talking about. I don’t think my father ever used that. It’s well covered by the slang dictionaries. It’s got a history of 40 to 50 years, we know for certain. I bet it’s older than that.

Any work that I’d ever done in trying to dig up its history didn’t turn up anything earlier than, say, 1961. I don’t know much more about it. I don’t think it’s regionally localized. I don’t think it belongs to a particular part of the country. It is interesting, though, that you’ve pinned it on a generation. I think that young people today would understand it, but I don’t think they would use it usually.

Yes. I asked my son about it, and he’s 20. He said, yes, I know what you mean. I would not use it myself. They might be more likely to use the stink eye or the skunk eye. Do you know those variants?

No, but this young lady that I talked with at work said that in her family they also called it the stink face.

The stink face. Yeah, there’s a certain kind of scowl that you might do if you smell something nasty, right?

Right. Yeah, I was shocked the first time I heard this. I think I must have been out of high school, and I just thought it was the grossest thing I’d ever heard. And so, of course, I went to look up the origin of it. And my recollection is that it’s somebody who’s looking at you sort of through squinted eyes. Not so much the eyebrows. So it might be eyelashes that they’re looking through?

Yeah, just kind of glaring at you with their eyes almost closed. And it’s interesting to me that it’s not that old. I mean, maybe 50 years or so.

Right. Right. Well, I hope we’ve helped a little bit, Paula.

Well, yeah, that was fun.

Super duper.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

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