Word.ws English Dictionary

eye-to-eye

eye-to-eye adverb: facing the person under discussion.

Adverb

eye-to-eye (comparative more eye-to-eye, superlative most eye-to-eye)

  1. Facing the person under discussion.
    • So in time Mother learned to perceive me through the mirror. Even to smile at me. (Not eye-to-eye! Never.)2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde, page 30
    • There seemed to be a tacit understanding that the prisoners and the unit supervisor should not look at one another...at least not eye-to-eye.2002, James D. Truax, The Cake-Eater Conspiracy, page 44

Forms of eye-to-eye

comparativemore eye-to-eye
superlativemost eye-to-eye
alternative formeye to eye

Questions about eye-to-eye

What does eye-to-eye mean?
Eye-to-eye means facing the person under discussion.
What part of speech is eye-to-eye?
Eye-to-eye is an adverb.

Words near eye-to-eye in the dictionary

  1. eye-stripes
  2. eye-sweet
  3. Eye-talian
  4. Eye-talians
  5. Eye-tie
  6. eye-to-eye
  7. eye-tooth
  8. Eye-tye
  9. eye-watering
  10. eye-wateringly
  11. eye-winker

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eye-to-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: “eye-to-eye.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eye-to-eye. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.