eye-watering

British

adjective

painful or extremely unpleasant

eye-watering electricity bills

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

eye-wateringly adverb

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.

During that period, bullion has dropped by 17% while silver has fallen by an eye-watering 28%, according to FactSet data.

From Barron's

Meta and Google racked up eye-watering legal fees defending this.

From BBC

At the center of the supply squeeze in the Middle East, traders are paying an eye-watering $160 a barrel for the Emirati oil that can dodge the Strait of Hormuz, far above those global benchmarks.

From The Wall Street Journal

Crypto proponents say tokenized stocks can be a game-changer, offering 24/7 trading and the chance to own fractions of shares that might come with eye-watering prices.

From The Wall Street Journal

The eye-watering level of funding reflects the soaring costs of computing power and comes amid lingering questions about whether OpenAI and other AI companies can generate sufficient revenue to cover those costs.

From Barron's

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023