Word.ws English Dictionary

roll one's eyes

roll one's eyes verb: to deliberately turn one's eyes upwards, usually to indicate disapproval, indifference or frustration.

Verb

roll one's eyes (third-person singular simple present rolls one's eyes, present participle rolling one's eyes, simple past and past participle rolled one's eyes)

  1. (idiomatic) To deliberately turn one's eyes upwards, usually to indicate disapproval, indifference or frustration.
    • […]when these three men looked at the porter, they saw that he was intoxicated; and, observing him narrowly, they thought that he was one of their own class, and said, He is a mendicant like ourselves, and will amuse us by his conversation:—but the porter, hearing what they said, arose, and rolled...1859, Edward William Lane, Edward Stanley Poole, The Thousand and One Nights
    • Woebot was full of tasks and tricks — little mental health hacks — which at first made me roll my eyes. One day Woebot asked me to press an ice cube to my forehead, to feel the sensation as a way of better connecting with my body.2022 September 27, Barclay Bram, “My Therapist, the Robot”, in The New York Times
  2. (archaic, idiomatic) As definition 1, but indicating flirtation or desire.

roll one's eyes meaning in Tagalog and Arabic

roll one's eyes in Tagalog

turn one's eyes upwards
tumaray

roll one's eyes in Arabic

turn one's eyes upwards
أَدَارَ عَيْنَيْهِ ʔadāra ʕaynayhi, بَرَمَ عَيْنَيْهِ barama ʕaynayhi

Forms of roll one's eyes

third-person singular presentrolls one's eyes
present participlerolling one's eyes
past participlerolled one's eyes
pastrolled one's eyes

Questions about roll one's eyes

What does roll one's eyes mean?
Roll one's eyes means to deliberately turn one's eyes upwards, usually to indicate disapproval, indifference or frustration.
What is roll one's eyes in Tagalog?
Roll one's eyes in Tagalog is tumaray. See Roll one's eyes meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is roll one's eyes?
Roll one's eyes is a verb.
What is the past tense of roll one's eyes?
The past tense of roll one's eyes is rolled one's eyes.

Words near roll one's eyes in the dictionary

  1. roll of the dice
  2. roll off
  3. roll off one's tongue
  4. roll off the tongue
  5. roll on
  6. roll one's eyes
  7. roll one's own
  8. roll one's r's
  9. roll one's wheels
  10. roll out
  11. roll out the red carpet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roll one's eyes (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-roll one's eyes.ogg.

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