googly-eyed

English

Ed E. Ford, a googly-eyed comedian (sense 1)

Googly-eyed food (sense 2)

Googly-eyed couple in wheelchairs (sense 3)

Googly-eyed child (sense 4)

Etymology

From googly eye.

Adjective

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

1. Having prominent, bulging eyes; bug-eyed.
   • 2010, Brandy Taylor Fink, Disrupting Fraternity Culture, page 80:

     This girl comes up to me, this googly-eyed girl […] She has to be the ugliest *** that ever lived

   • 2012, Florian Werner, Cow: A Bovine Biography, page 93:

     Adding to that is the fact that the cow eye protrudes slightly from its socket, giving the cow a googly-eyed look.

   • 2013, Ruchama King Feuerman, In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist, page 208:

     Isaac was about to correct him on that score, but the googly-eyed man got there first.

   • 2015, Barbara E. Moss, The Two Brothers Detective Agency:

     Then he looked up to Pete's mirror. Aaargh! A googly-eyed monster looked back at him! "That's me." He laughed. "That magnifying glass sure does make my eye look big!"

   • 2022, Tamara Berry, Buried in a Good Book:

     Quentin's eyes bulged. He'd always had a googly-eyed stare, more like a dehydrated carp than a man, but Tess had never realized how prominent it was before.

2. Having circular eyes with large dark centers; Having craft googly eyes for eyes, or having eyes with similar appearance.
   • 2017, Katy Upperman, Kissing Max Holden, page 15:

     I notice his sleepwear: candy corn sprinkled over flannel pants, a googly-eyed jack-o'-lantern grinning gaily from his T-shirt.

   • 2021, Henrietta MacKenzie, The Secret Lives of Two Googly-Eyed Cats:

     Milly and Tilly are googly-eyed cats who belong to a cheeky little baby called Penny.

   • 2023, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, The Two Moralities: Conservatives, Liberals, and the Roots of Our Political Divide, page 14:

     In the hill-climbing case, for example, Kiley Hamlin, Karen Wynn, and Paul Bloom presented six-month-old infants with scenes involving three googly-eyed geometric shapes.

3. Making googly eyes; giving a look of infatuation or adoration; moonstruck.
   • 2013, Loree Lough, For Love of Eli, page 81:

     It was you two, lookin' all googly-eyed at each other that held us up.

   • 2018, L.A. Witt, Afraid to Fly:

     But you guys are still in that gross googly-eyed stage, and I don't want to be there for that.

   • 2022, Jonathan Shubs, Sun's Dance of the Channels, page 179:

     […] And System 5 Biorhythm Opposites is opposite polarity googly-eyed partners." "Googly-eyed? Why Googly-eyed?" questioned Grandfather Terra. "Because they make googly eyes at each other across the table. They cannot talk but they can look at each other and make googly eyes."

   • 2022 October 28, Malcolm Harris, “Are We Living Under ‘Technofeudalism’?”, in New York Magazine‎^[1]:

     Even though they’re shifting the tone from googly-eyed naïveté to skepticism and even horror, they agree with Silicon Valley that computers and the internetworking thereof has revolutionized the mode of production.

   • 2023, Heidi Chiavaroli, Where Faith Belongs:

     Which painting had Amie gone googly-eyed for all those months ago?

4. Staring in an unfocussed manner.
   • 2001, Larry L. King, The One-eyed Man, page 186:

     He had said little during the long ride back from our hush-hush rendezvous, just staring googly-eyed and abstracted down the slab, stroking his jawline now and again, nodding his head silently as if to ratify that yes, yes, that certainly was a goddamn road ahead, lots of road.

   • 2009, Jeffrey S. Jenkins, In Bolivia, page 142:

     There's a mellow vibe that I think stems from the lack of vehicle traffic, thanks to the shuttle that carries around the googly-eyed employees. I'm sure that after twelve hours in front of a computer there's some truth to the appellation of the Google faithful as googly-eyed.

   • 2022, Wendy Willow, Silver Butterfly Wings:

     I was met with the googly-eyed stare of someone who has just awakened from a deep sleep.

   • 2023, London Lovett, Better Off Shortbread:

     I met his judgmental stare with a counter stare that I liked to think conveyed defiance. (Admittedly, without a mirror it was hard to tell. It might just have been a crazy, googly-eyed stare.)