In many cultures, tugging at one’s lower eyelid is an expression of skepticism, as if to indicate that the person is being watchful and alert and won’t be taken in. In the United States, the gesture may be accompanied by a phrase like “Do you see the green of my eye?” In France, it’s accompanied by mon oeil, meaning “my eye,” and in Japan, this action is referred to as akanbe or red eye. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “My Eye, Mon Oeil”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, my name is Adis, and I’m in Arizona.
And I had a question.
When I was a little girl, and this was in the 40s, my grandmother used to do this thing. She would pull down her lower lid of her eye and say, do you see the green in my eye? What she meant was she was meaning that she doubted the veracity of whatever I was saying.
-huh. -huh. Okay.
So when you were a little girl, you said something that she didn’t quite believe, and she would look at you and put her finger on her lower eyelid and lower it and say, do you see the green of my eye?
That’s it. Exactly.
This is a pretty universal gesture among a lot of different cultures. If you hear somebody giving you a tall tail, you lower that eyelid with your finger to indicate that you’re alert. You’re paying attention. You’re being skeptical of what they’re saying.
And this is used, for example, in France. There’s an expression that translates as my eye. Monoi. Monoi. And in Japan as well, in a lot of anime drawings, it translates as red eye. And it’s that same gesture. Italy and Germany as well.
Yep, yep. It’s used in a lot of cultures.
And I was curious about where your grandmother was because in this country, the version I’ve heard is buckeye.
Buckeye?
Yeah, somebody will just make that same gesture and look at somebody skeptically and say, buckeye, but I’ve not heard the green of my eye. That’s really interesting.
And the bone universal, though, is my eye, right? Or all my eyes.
Yeah, yeah, just as a… my eye, and maybe even without the gesture. Yeah, like, you gotta be kidding. So she was part of a long tradition there. Avis, thank you so much for calling.
Okay, thank you. Thanks for sharing that story. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. So in English, at least back to the 1700s in print, but no doubt that the folklore gesture of my eye goes back much further than that. Much further.
And we probably got the my eye from the French Monoi. I think it goes back to at least the 1400s.
Well, I’m thinking of that gesture, too, that I see more often today, at least in the circles I move in, where you point two of your fingers toward your eyes and then turn them around as if they’re pointing at the other person. I’m watching you.
Yeah.
I do this with my son.
Yeah.
Yeah. It’s like you’re focusing on your eyes and you point your eyes at them. You’re supposed to feel the death glare. It’s a variety of stink eye, right, or skunk eye. Parent eye. Dad eye.
Dad eye.
It never stops him.
No, of course. It doesn’t work.
