big eye

the big eye

1. A flirtatious or seductive look. That girl over there is totally giving you the big eye! Why don't you go talk to her?
2. Purposeful eye contact. I tried to give the presenter the big eye when I sensed his audience growing restless, but he didn't see me.
See also: big, eye
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

*big eye

 
1. a flirtatious look or gaze; a long look to get another's attention. (*Typically: get ~; give someone ~.) Look at that pretty girl giving you the big eye. I thought she was cute, so I gave her the big eye.
2. obvious eye contact with someone. (*Typically: get ~; give someone ~.) Tom gave me the big eye to let me know he wanted to talk to me. I tried to give her the big eye, but she never looked my way.
See also: big, eye
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • the big eye
  • give (one) the eye
  • give someone the eye
  • give the eye
  • look (one) in the eye(s)
  • look somebody in the eye/face
  • look someone in the eye
  • see eye to eye
  • see eye to eye, to
  • see eye to eye with (someone)
References in classic literature
I see and have seen worse things, and divers things so hideous, that I should neither like to speak of all matters, nor even keep silent about some of them: namely, men who lack everything, except that they have too much of one thing--men who are nothing more than a big eye, or a big mouth, or a big belly, or something else big,--reversed cripples, I call such men.
Anne was safe, and a wee, white lady, with her mother's big eyes, was lying beside her.
'But, grandmother, what big eyes you have!' she said.
They turned to look at the bird, which fluttered its wings and stared back at them with its big eyes.
He was a man of fifty, a sort of sea-wolf, with big eyes, a complexion of oxidised copper, red hair and thick neck, and a growling voice.
And he felt still more frightened when, kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his brother's skin and saw close to him his big eyes, full of a strange light.
"But this copper man," continued Dorothy, looking at it with big eyes, "is not alive at all, and I wonder what it was made for, and why it was locked up in this queer place."
But while I looked at him his former aspect, so subtly inhuman, so tantalizingly familiar, crept back into his big eyes, repellant and attractive.
"And that's just what I shall do if you don't let those little balls of pork alone," said Jim, glaring at the kitten with his round, big eyes. "If you injure any one of them I'll chew you up instantly."
The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused.
Anne's white face and big eyes appeared over the bedclothes with a startling suddenness.
How the big eyes stared and the blue lips smiled as the girls went in.
it will be so lovely to see the dear thing open her big eyes and clap her hands at the splendid news."
In the meantime, the pretty girl stood there, gazing at him with her big eyes, and holding out her tambourine to him and waiting.
She was still mighty shy, but she'd keep on following me about with those big eyes of hers--"