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As conjunctivitis and a bewildering array of other eye diseases plague Dabbler Towers, Mr Slang considers the peepers…

The five senses do not bulk overlarge in slang. Poets like them and prate accordingly; slang, being of a harder edge, prefers less subtlety. Compared to the vast lists pertaining to matters sexual, those of sight, taste, sound, smell and touch are under-represented. In terms of simple definitions the mouth (177 plus 39 tongues and 25 lips) is followed by the nose (101, plus 43 for smell), the eyes (99) the hand and fingers (69) and the ears (9). In terms of image, however, it is all visual: the eyes – recently savaging various locals – have it. So let us look at the eyes, and if you’re ready, would you try to read the top line…

V…A…G… Very good. Slang has its idées fixes and as ever, first on the list is, shall we say, physique. The eye is the vagina being similarly shaped, surrounded by hair, and in the mood, able to ‘water’. It is, indeed, the eye that weeps most when pleased. In prison it is the anus, known to the Irish as the eye of the arse, and elsewhere as the back-eye, blind eye and round-eye. The itchy eye is a haemorrhoid but an eye doctor is not, as one might assume, a proctologist, but one who bowls from the pavilion end. Thanks to the distinctive logo, it refers in hard-boiled land to Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, and is the root of private eye. It can be a warning and a look-out. And a television.

The dismissives in your eye and, to round things off, in your other eye, both suggest the speaker’s lack of faith in what they hear. The echt-example of such dubiety is all my eye and Betty Martin, which means nonsense. The phrase extends the simple all my eye, but Betty Martin herself continues to be a source of controversy. Partridge suspects that she was a late 18^th century London character and that no record of her exists other than this catchphrase. Jon Bee (1823) and Hotten (1860) refer to the alleged Latin prayer, Ora pro mihi, beate Martine (‘Pray for me blessed Martin’), i.e. St Martin of Tours, the patron saint of publicans and reformed drunkards. It has yet to be found in any version of the liturgy. Writing in 1914, Dr L.A. Waddell suggests another Latinism, O mihi Britomartis (‘O bring help to me, Britomartis’), referring to the tutelary goddess of Crete. We had better give space too to the idea, proposed in Charles Lee’s Memoirs (1805), that there had once been ‘an abandoned woman called Grace’, who, in the late 18^th century, married a Mr Martin. She became notorious as Betty Martin, and all my eye was apparently among her favourite phrases.’ (See also straws, grasping at.)

The references to nonsense and drunkenness bring in eyewash, which in its original military use meant anything, e.g. washing the eyes, that is done for effect rather than for any practical purpose. In slang it means both humbug and cheap liquor, which when illicitly distilled is eyewater. (Larry Dugan’s eye water, immortalising a once celebrated Dublin shoe-black, was merely blacking.) This, among other things can be taken as an eye-opener, the first drink (or drug) of the day; as well as a not necessarily unpleasant surprise, an attractive woman and, I can only apologise, the penis. The drink, at least, can be followed by the toast here’s mud in your eye, the etymology of which is moot, but may have some bearing on the trenches of World War I. An excess of alcohol leads to one’s eyes being set at eight in the morning, so drunk that they stare in different directions, or to one’s eyes being opened, which indicates the drunkard’s wild, unfocused stare. In all cases the eyes – bloodshot and sunken – will resemble another fine military coinage pissholes in the snow (which excavation can also be in a snowbank, or resemble two burnt holes in a blanket). It is all one big eye-ache, an irritation and if worse a regular eye-bunger, or setback.

Sometimes an eye is only an eye, or at least offers a connection with viewing. The eyelid movies are daydreams or any fantasies enjoyed with the eyes closed, often as stimulated by a hallucinogenic drug. To stare is to eyefuck or to eyeshoot; to cut one’s eyes is to glance suspiciously or look furtively; in the jailhouse eye-trouble is a propensity (real or imagined) for staring at other prisoners or at warders, usually in challenging manner and often the start of a fight. Got your eye full? is another challenge, often suffixed by ‘Wanna picture?’ Violence may again ensue. However an eyeful is a pretty girl, who knocks your eyes out and to whom one gives the eye (or eyeball or eye-roll), puts the eye on and for whom one has long or raw eyes. In possession of, perhaps, a nice pair of eyes (gaze lower, gents) she is considered eye-popping but a more literal popping gives one eyes like cod’s bollocks. The equation of a glassy eye with a cold, disdainful stare calls up the cod, or any other fish, gazing frigid from the fishmonger’s slab. Eyeglass weather  foggy weather, in which one cannot see clearly and thus requires an eyeglass for magnification. Staring presumably underpins the phrase tossed in the direction of an unknown passer-by: there you go with your eye out.

There is much more, but space remains my enemy, and to conclude let us turn to that sure and certain help Captain Grose, anatomist of the vulgar tongue, who was less fettered than am I when it came to defining. In 1788 he notes I’ll knock out your eight eyes and explains it as ‘a common Billingsgate threat from one fish nymph to another: every woman, according to the naturalists of that society, having eight eyes, viz. two seeing eyes, two bub-eyes, a bell-eye, two popes-eyes, and a ***-eye’. The puns on bubby and belly are obvious, the pope’s eye is the lymphatic gland in a leg of mutton, regarded as a delicacy; here presumably the urinal and anal orifices; the censored term remains mysterious, despite a mere trio of asterisks it is presumably, and to bring us full circle, a reference to the vagina.

image ©Gabriel Green

You can buy Green’s Dictionary of Slang, as well as Jonathon’s more slimline Chambers Slang Dictionary, plus other entertaining works, at his Amazon page. Jonathon also blogs and Tweets.