eyeball
Americannoun
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eyeballs
plural
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the ball or globe of the eye.
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Informal. eyeballs, people who view or read something.
Old TV shows are getting a lot of eyeballs online.
verb (used with object)
idioms
noun
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the entire ball-shaped part of the eye
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in close confrontation
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of eyeball
1580–90; 1900–05 eyeball for def. 3; eye + ball 1
Explanation
Your eyeball is the round, ball-shaped part of your eye. When you go to an eye doctor, she will take a close look at your eyeballs. Every vertebrate — or animal with a spine — has eyeballs that sit within an eye socket. Your eyeballs are your organs of sight, making it possible for you to see light and color and to focus on the things you're looking at, sending all of these messages to your brain. You can also use the word eyeball, informally, as a verb: "Why do you always eyeball me when I walk by? Is it my strange hat?"
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
When you open them there needs to be a pleat, so when you close them there is enough skin to cover the eyeball.
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026
"Evolutionarily speaking, you don't keep the organ that you don't need. After watching many videos, I realized this animal is moving its eyeball toward the light."
From Science Daily ● Aug. 23, 2026
He had seen documentaries in which robotic animals with eyeball cameras captured footage of natural habitats.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 4, 2026
It causes the eyeball to grow longer from front to back, making it harder to focus farther away.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 28, 2025
I peered into the darkness and saw a red eyeball glowering at me.
From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall
"There's going to be eyeballs on every player in the World Cup," Demetriou added.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2026
“We are now seeing the conversion of civilian surveillance into wartime intelligence collection,” said Alexander Leslie, a national-security expert at threat-intelligence consultants Recorded Future, who sees a global “soft underbelly” in omnipresent digital eyeballs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 11, 2026
The researchers tested the method on 12 rabbit eyeballs.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 29, 2026
“I didn’t ever intend to have so many eyeballs turn to me and go, ’What are you doing now?’”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026
I guess she looked at me more, or she didn’t avoid looking at me so much, and I wasn’t watching her out of the corners of my eyeballs anymore.
From "Ida B" by Katherine Hannigan
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
