dead-eyed

English

Adjective

dead-eyed (comparative more dead-eyed, superlative most dead-eyed)

1. Having eyes that lack emotion or seem vacant.
   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 911:

     […] they do not explain the incredible pathos of Paul Anthony Heaven reading his lecture to a crowd of dead-eyed kids picking at themselves and drawing vacant airplane- and genitalia-doodles on their college-rule note-pads, […]

   • 2011, Andrew Klavan, The Final Hour, Thomas Nelson, →ISBN, page 20:

     The prisoners watched me from inside their cells, watched dead-eyed and silent as I was dragged past.

   • 2011, Joe Schreiber, Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, Houghton Mifflin, →ISBN, pages 132–133:

     The dead-eyed man regarded me without the slightest change of expression.

   • 2013, Janos Jantner, Drawing Horror-Movie Monsters, The Rosen Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 18:

     With a staggering walk, ragged clothes, and a terrifying dead-eyed stare, the zombie is an instantly recognizable monster of the big screen.

Coordinate terms

• fish-eyed
• glassy-eyed

 

See also

• thousand-yard stare