Word.ws English Dictionary

black eyes

black eyes is the plural of black eye.

Meaning of black eye

Noun

black eye (plural black eyes)

  1. A periorbital hematoma; a visible bruise surrounding a person's eye; an assault causing such a bruise; the eye involved.
    • "You got a black eye out of him, and that's for publication. We can't have this reign of terror, Mr. Malone."1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    blinker, shiner
  2. (figuratively) A defeat.
  3. (figuratively) Damage to a reputation.
    • He looked downward in mournful gloom at the skeet-shooting range he had ordered built for the officers on his headquarters staff, and he recalled the mortifying afternoon General Dreedle had tongue-lashed him ruthlessly in front of Colonel Korn and Major Danby and ordered him to throw open the...1961, Joseph Heller, Catch-22, Simon & Schuster (2003), p. 205
  4. (dated) An eye having a dark iris, regarded as a point of beauty.
  5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see black, eye.

Questions about black eyes

What is black eyes the plural of?
Black eyes is the plural of black eye.

Words near black eyes in the dictionary

  1. black ewes
  2. black eye
  3. Black Eyed Pea
  4. Black Eyed Peas
  5. black eyed susan
  6. black eyes
  7. black fast
  8. black fasts
  9. black fatigue
  10. black fax
  11. black faxes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black eyes (page history and authors); black eye (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “black eyes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black_eyes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.