Apr
17
Eyeballing
Filed Under E
It’s amusing that you can turn most nouns into verbs in English. I like this one especially in contexts, where it’s opposed to having the computer check something.
Andras Mueller
Leipzig, Germany
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5 Responses to “Eyeballing”
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“Eyeball” is also used in the Southern U.S. as a term meaning, “to look at in a menacing or contemptuous manner.”
It is heard frequently when a parent is disciplining a child. If the child glares back at his or her parent, the parent may interpret it as an act of defiance. Should that be the case, the child will be admonished with something like, “Don’t you EYEBALL me!”
Another frequent usage is the gerund form (as Andras puts it above) to describe someone gazing at a person or object with envy, desire, or lust. I can still hear my mother saying, “I see you eyeballing that cookie jar.” That statement, of course, carried the unspoken warning that looking at the cookie jar was the only thing I should consider!
I don’t have fond memories of this word. In Army Basic training, the Drill Sergeants woulds always say “don’t be eyeballing me private”, or “are you eyeballing me private”. Of course the word “private” was usually substituted for a word a bit more colorful if you know what I mean!
When I worked in a molecular biology lab, one of my scientist-colleagues would use the term “eyeballometric” to refer to a rough estimate, as in, “Eyeballometrically, I think you’ve got about 10 milliliters there.”
I lost the vision in my left eye due to a surgical error
twenty years ago. Family being what it is, we give each
other the gears whenever we can. My brother is deaf in
one ear. He will say to me ” Just eyeball it for me, won’t
you, dear? and my response to him is ” Oh, I hear you!”
“Verbing weirds language.”