Good morning, folks! Today I have something brief but interesting that I found while perusing The Grammarist. The topics of discussion today are gimlet eyes and gimlet cocktails. Yes, it’s a bit early in the day for cocktails, but as they say, “It’s 5:00 p.m. somewhere!”
To have a gimlet eye or to cast a gimlet eye means to stare at someone or something in a piercing manner, or to stare in an extremely watchful manner. The term gimlet eye is derived from the gimlet, a small piercing or boring tool first used in the mid-1300s. The term gimlet eye came into use in the mid-1700s. The adjective form is gimlet-eyed. Note that the adjective is hyphenated, while the noun form, gimlet eye, is not hyphenated.
A gimlet cocktail is composed of gin and lime juice, with some variations. This concoction was invented in the latter 1800s by the British Naval Surgeon Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Desmond Gimlette, as a method to combat scurvy. [KC – I bet he traveled with a lot of happy sailors, though this might also be the reason behind early explorers finding their ways to the wrong continents.]
“Leave me in the car again and you get worse than a gimlet eye.”
Kara Church
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