I came across the word eye-glazing in the article of today’s Time magazine (Sept 9) titled ‘Slow Down! Why Some Languages Sound So Fast?’, which I'm sure will interest 'language buffs'.
It begins with (Sorry for a bit lengthy):
“Here's one of the least-interesting paragraphs you've ever read:
'Last night I opened the front door to let the cat out. It was such a beautiful night that I wandered down to the garden to get a breath of fresh air. Then I heard a click as the door closed behind me.’
OK, it becomes a little less eye-glazing after that, with the speaker getting arrested while trying to force the door back open. Still, we ain't talking Noel Coward here.”
I checked online dictionaries to find the exact meaning of eye-glazing. I was able to find many examples of usages of this word, e.g.,
- But the rest of my audience was growing restive, with here and there an eye glazing over. —The Burglar on the Prowl
- I mean, thousands of pages, stuff that's almost eye glazing to read. —CNN Transcript Dec 4, 2002
- The statute has become such an eye glazing mess that it’s easy to forget that in 1965 it was beautifully designed and absolutely essential. —The Volokh Conspiracy
From the above examples I guessed the word means ‘making eyes unfocused, blurred’ (Correct me if I'm wrong), but I couldn’t find its definition in any dictionaries including Cambridge, Merriam-Webster Online, nor Urban Dictionary.
I wonder why eye-glazing which looks as if very colloquial is not registered in any dictionaries, while they accommodate eye-related compounds such as 'eye opening,' 'eye-catching,' and 'eye popping'. Isn’t eye-glazing a popular word?