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Damn your eyes

Posted by Smokey Stover on July 06, 2008 at 05:45

In Reply to: Damn your eyes posted by ESC on July 05, 2008 at 13:29:

: : : I'm reading a nautical series and have questions regarding two phrases (origin, meaning, etc.) "My arse on a band box" and "Damn your eyes".

: : A bandbox is a hat box. If that helps.

: Damn your eyes is in the archives:
: www.phrases.org.uk bulletin_board 1 messages 2661.html

I'd like to add what the Oxford English Dictionary has to say:

"Also, damn (one's) eyes!, used as an abusive expression."

The OED doesn't mention a nautical orging. Among the quotations that it gives of this phrase are these two:

"1761 STERNE Tr. Shandy III. xii. 64 From the great and tremendous oath of William the Conqueror, (By the splendour of God) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger, (Damn your eyes). . . 1850 H. MELVILLE White Jacket II. xxvi. 170 What man-of-war's-men call a damn-my-eyes-tar, that is, a humbug. And many damn-my-eyes humbugs there are in this man-of-war world of ours. . . ."
SS

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