Eyelock

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An occurrence of mutual staring, where each person gazes fixedly into the other's eyes. countable, uncountable

    "Finally, when the Sunday School classes marched into church for the last hour of the service, there would be added to the congregation young boys and girls, secured to their seats by the eyelocks of stern teachers."

Verb
  1. 1
    To lock eyes (with).

    "We eyelocked, looked really hard at eachother,^([sic]) each one thinking the other was the strange thing in the fishtank."

Example

More examples

"Finally, when the Sunday School classes marched into church for the last hour of the service, there would be added to the congregation young boys and girls, secured to their seats by the eyelocks of stern teachers."

Etymology

From eye + lock.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.