This post is about all the different things you can do with your eyes (عين عيون 3een 3yuun). As anybody who’s listened to any Arab pop song can attest, the word 3een and its various variations appears all the time in Arabic. In fact there are loads and loads of nice idioms to do with eyes which it’s worth learning a bit about.
You can more or less divide these idioms up into three broad sections. The first set will be fairly familiar to English native speakers because they depend on a straightforward enough equivalence of eyes and seeing. The second set depends on a broad idea of the eye as something positive to be attached to compliments willy-nilly. The third set are to do with the evil eye.
Although I think this list is fairly comprehensive of the most common ones, many of these words – especially the curses and formulaic expressions – have about a thousand different variants and synonyms. Just to warn you.
Fairly literal stuff to do with eyes
حط عينك بعيني – 7eTT 3eenak b3eeni ‘look me in the eye’ [= put your eye in my eye]. Carries the same connotations of ‘be honest with me’ as the English expression does.
شوفت عينك shoofet 3eenak – ‘as you can clearly see’. shoofet is almost certainly a noun of instance with ـة, but it’s often spelt with a تاء in this fixed expression.
شفتو بعيني shifto b3eeni – ‘I saw it with my own eyes’ [= with my eye]. Various variants including بهالعينتين bhal3eenteen ‘with these two eyes’.
عيني عينك 3eeni 3eenak – ‘brazenly, without any shame, openly’ [my eye your eye]. 3eenak doesn’t change, even though it’s transparently ‘your eye’. Some people say 3eenak 3eenak instead.
لعمى بعيونك l3ama b@3yuunak – Goddamn [you], literally ‘blindness in your eyes’! Often just لعمى l3ama, a particularly Syrian/Lebanese expression of surprise or exasperation.
حط عينو على 7aTT 3eeno 3ala – ‘have your eye on’ [= put your eye on].
في واحدة حلوة حاطط عيني عليها
fii waa7de 7ilwe 7aaTeT 3eeni 3aleyya
There’s a really nice one I’ve got my eye on/I’ve had my eye on
خلى عينو على khalla 3eeno 3ala – ‘keep an eye on’ [= keep your eye on]
تحت عينك ta7t 3eenak – right there in front of you, in sight [= under your eye]
فقس عينو fa2as/yif2os 3eeno – to take someone’s eye out. Usually a symbolic threat, equivalent to ‘fuck X up’ or something. This has a loooot of variants: طلع عينو Talla3 3eeno ‘take his eye out’, etc.
كسر عينو kasar 3eeno – to look away, to break eye contact [= broke his eye]
عينو زايغة 3eeno zaaygha – a philanderer, a guy who thinks about cheating on his wife or girlfriend [= he has a skidding eye]
عينو لبرا 3eeno labarra – a philanderer, a guy who thinks about cheating on his wife or girlfriend [= his eye is to outside]
عينو بيضا 3eeno beeDa – a womaniser [= he has a white eye]
ما حدا معبيه عينو maa 7ada m3abbi 3eeno – nobody is good enough for him [= nobody fills his eye]
الك عين ilak 3een – ‘you’ve got the gall to…’ [= do you have the eye to] followed by subjunctive.
سقط من عيني sa2aT min 3eeni – he fell in my estimation [= he fell from my eye]
Eyes as something nice
يا عيني yaa 3eeni – a generic term of affection.
نور العين nuur il3een – probably similar to ‘apple of my eye’.
يا عيني عليك yaa 3eeni 3aleek – I can’t think of a particularly nice translation, but this is used when you describe something (for example that you can’t remember the name of) and someone else works it out, if someone works out what you’re talking about before you get there, or if someone says something you agree with. Probably equivalent to the dry old ‘there we go’ or ‘exactly’.
عيونك الحلوين 3yuunak il7ilwiin. Literally ‘your beautiful eyes’ or ‘it’s your eyes that are beautiful’, but don’t let that put you off. A nice fixed response to someone saying that something is 7ilw. You can also say inte l7ilw ‘you’re the nice one’.
نور عيونك nuur @3yuunak. Literally ‘light of your eyes’. Another fixed expression which can used to respond to the equally untranslatable نورت nawwar@t or منور mnawwer, literally ‘[you’ve] lit up [the place you’re visiting]’, but used to welcome someone or tell them they look nice on Facebook.
على عيني 3ala 3eeni – ‘on my eye’, a less common synonym of the omnipresent 3ala raasi. Used in all sorts of different contexts, but mainly to say ‘of course’ to a request. Various variants, including min 3eeni, abshir min hal3eenteen, etc.
على عيني وراسي 3ala 3eeni wraasi – ‘on my eye and my head’. A slightly more elaborate version of 3ala 3eeni or 3ala raasi. Like 3ala raasi this one can be used to express respect for someone (often before saying something rude about them):
هلق كريس على عيني وراسي, بس…
halla2 @kriis 3ala 3eeni wraasi, bass…
With the greatest of respect to Chris….
Now Chris is a great guy, but…
تكرم عينك tikram 3eenak – ‘may your eye be honoured’. A polite assent to requests. You might also hear, in the context of for example a party in X’s honour, tikram 3een X in response to requests.
طرقني عين Tara2ni 3een – ‘he cursed me with the evil eye’ [= he hit me an eye]. Various variants including ضربني عين Darabni 3een, with derived stuff like اكلت ضربة عين 2akal@t Darbet 3een ‘I’ve been cursed!’ [= I ate an eye blow].
The basic idea behind this, as you might know, is that feeling envy towards someone (hitting them with the evil eye) will cause bad things to happen to them, thus the synonym حسد يحسد 7asad yi7sid, literally ‘envy’. ‘Curse’ is a pretty good equivalent though, and obviously the expression is often used in a way that is not serious.
يخزي العين yikhzi l3een – literally ‘may He shame the eye’, i.e. may God stop you from being hit by the evil eye. A generic and arguably somewhat folksy way to compliment somebody or something.
كسر عينو kasar 3eeno – to have dirt on someone in such a way that they’re powerless against you, i.e. I guess to have ‘broken’ the power of their evil eye.
عطاه العين الحمرا 3aTaa l3een il7amra – he glared at him
ابو العين الحمرا 2abu l3een il7amra – a guy who’s always glowering
فنجر عين fanjar 3een – he got angry [= he angered an eye]
Some related and less idiomatic stuff
عاين يعاين معاينة 3aayan y3aayen m3aayane – ‘inspect, examine’ (a doctor for example)
عوينات 3weenaat – ‘glasses’ [= eyelets]
عين الشمس 3een ishsham@s – the SUN’S FIERY DISK, the sun, the face of the sun, also a place in Egypt
العين السحرية il3een issi7riyye – a peephole in a door [= the magic eye]
عين العاصفة 3een il3aaSife – the eye of the storm [just like in English]