eye candy

English

Etymology

Early 1980s US TV/advertising jargon,[1] perhaps influenced by earlier nose candy (cocaine).

Noun

eye candy (uncountable)

  1. A very attractive person or persons, or the salient visible physical attributes of same.
    I'm going to the beach to check out some eye candy.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:beautiful person
    Antonyms: see Thesaurus:ugly person
    • 1980, Geoffrey Cowan, See No Evil, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 309:
      But despite his claims that NBC would become “the class act,” not all of [Fred] Silverman's changes seemed aimed in direction of excellence. Unfortunately his rationale for eschewing exploitative “eye candy” seemed to apply to more serious sex-related ventures as well.
  2. (by extension) Any object or sight with considerable visual appeal.
    Synonym: feast for the eyes
    • 2007, Maximum PC (Winter edition, page 3)
      DirectX 10 promises an almost obscene step up in the level of eye candy you can expect from an A-list game, which is the great news. The bad news is, you'll need a new videocard to get those gorgeous graphics.

Translations

See also

References

  1. eye candy at Google Ngram Viewer
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