dollar-sign eyes
Greediness or a moment of greediness.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“He got dollar-sign eyes when he saw the huge reward.”
“You have dollar-sign eyes whenever we walk past the luxury car dealership.”
“Do not let dollar-sign eyes ruin your friendship over a small lottery win.”
“When the investor heard about the potential profit, she developed dollar-sign eyes and ignored the risks.”
“My cousin gets dollar-sign eyes every time he talks about his plan to sell his old comic book collection for thousands.”
“The landlord had dollar-sign eyes while explaining how much he could charge if he turned the garden into a parking lot.”
“The merchant’s initial concern for his community vanished, replaced by dollar-sign eyes as he realized the immense wealth the new contract promised.”
The term originates from a 20th-century visual convention in animation and comics, where a character’s eyes are replaced by dollar signs to denote a moment of sudden greed. The device provides a convenient graphic shorthand for the visual manifestation of avarice, though the specific date of its linguistic transition from the page to the idiom remains unrecorded.
- 01
all eyes
Watching alertly or attentively.
- 02
all eyes and ears
Very attentive.
- 03
babies in the eyes
The minute reflection which one sees of oneself in the eyes of another.
- 04
bat one's eyes
To signal or feign by fluttering one's eyelids, as romantic interest.
- 05
bawl one's eyes out
To cry, shed tears, weep loudly.
- 06
believe one's eyes
To believe that something which one directly sees is truly the case.
- 07
clap eyes on
To see; to lay eyes on.
- 08
close one's eyes
To ignore something.
Last updated August 10, 2026