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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
An evil eye is a malevolent glance. The origin of the expression “evil eye†is sometimes traced to occult practices, but it seems more likely that the phrase entered English via Jewish culture and the Bible (see Proverbs 23:6 and the parable of the employer in Matthew 20). In modern English the phrase usually occurs in the idiom “give X an evil eye.â€
On a few web sites “evil eye†is replaced with “eagle eye.†Perhaps they are thinking about the fear-inducing stare of a bald eagle. The idiom “keep an eagle eye on” may also be influencing the switch.
Examples:
From a book that is a collection of American Indian narratives: “The men turned and give him the eagle eye, but Niko kept walking and did not look back.â€
Comment on a music site: “I give him the eagle-eye “I’M ONTO YOU SCUMBAG” hard stare whenever I see him on the street or on the bus.â€
Comment on straightdope forum: “[The screech owl] used to like to sit on the curtain rods and when visitors came in, he’d swoop down on them all in a rush and startle them, then land on the back of a chair and give them the eagle eye as if warning them not to start any shit or else he’d rip their hair out.â€
Last edited by kem (2010-06-23 11:34:01)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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Very interesting.
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Re the Biblical roots, Mat. 6.22-23 is probably relevant as well—as part of the Sermon on the Mount it was certainly familiar to many generations of English speakers:
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! (KJV)
There is argument among exegetes as to the meaning of the notion of the eye being evil here, but it likely means “unhealthy†(as opposed to “single†meaning “wholeâ€, though also probaby “sincere, without duplicityâ€); yet it may imply (as does the Mat. 20 reference) an attitude of envy, which can indeed spread darkness on the soul. And envy does indeed easily become malevolent and spawn duplicity, so the ideas are all closely related.
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In any case, I would consider the examples you give to be pretty clearly blends with the “eagle-eye†family of usages; the notion of a malevolent glance overlaps greatly with the notion of a watchful or penetrating glance (looking at a situation with one’s scruten eyes), which of course involves a threat that if the one watched behaves wrongly he risks the malevolence, or at least the corrective action, of the watcher. (E.g. “give them the eagle eye as if warning them not to start any shit or else he’d rip their hair out.â€)
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As you know, I do not consider status as a blend to mean ifso fatso that something cannot be an eggcorn, but in these cases I don’t see any clear reanalysis necessarily going on.
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-06-23 12:20:51)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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There were a number of examples I did not cite in which “give X the eagle eye” seemed to mean “watch X carefully.” I left these out because I wasn’t sure they were eggcorns. They may, as you say, be confused, eggcornish blends of “keep an eagle eye on” and “give X the evil eye.” But they may also be new coinages that don’t depend on “evil eye,” perhaps following the pattern of “keep an eye on” >> “give eye to” >> “give X an eye” >> “give X an eagle eye” or something similar.
We run into this dilemma quite often, don’t we? The most obvious substitutions are awkward ones, where a word is inserted in a tight idiomatic context where it doesn’t make much sense. These are the easiest substitutions to spot. But when the substitution makes a little sense, and therefore feels more like an eggcorn, we are less certain that a substitution has happened—the phrase may have been invented de novo.
Last edited by kem (2010-06-24 11:15:52)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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The most obvious substitutions are awkward ones, where a word is inserted in a tight idiomatic context where it doesn’t make much sense. These are the easiest substitutions to spot. But when the substitution makes a little sense, and therefore feels more like an eggcorn, we are less certain that a substitution has happened—the phrase may have been invented de novo.
Well said.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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