# dollar-sign eyes

idiom

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/dollar-sign-eyes
Updated: 2026-08-10

## Meaning

Greediness or a moment of greediness.

## Examples

- 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.

## Origin

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.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.