Why do we have things catch our eye but not ‘both of our eyes’?
I am not a native English speaker, I usually hear “something caught my eye” but never “something caught (both) my eyes”. Strange to me.
Cambridge Dictionaries online provide these examples but without any explanation
catch sb’s eye
(i) to get someone’s attention:
A sudden movement caught my eye.(is), to get someone’s attention, especially by looking them. I
tried to catch the waiter’s eye, so we could order.I really like the colours of his jackets so much that they
were instantly noticeable by people that usually don’t recognise them.
Why might the one eye be caught with a hook? Does something catch our eye? In general, we see from one eye. Not from
other eyes.
It’s possible it evolved out of the phrase “caught my gaze”, where it’s assumed you’re using both eyes to gaze, or “caught my attention” and over time “gaze” or “attention” become “eye”, but someone more educated in the history of these terms would have to verify this.
What’s your comparison of caught my gaze and” caught my glance’ by Zwi: What does it mean?
I believe it relates to the verb ‘to eye’ and to the noun associated with it. Zwi explains that to eye makes you gaze at.
What is a ‘yes’
phrase the length of
a verb and how hard is
it to be given a single ‘eye”?
How
can we
describe ocular apparatus?
I know normally we should use “catch my eyes. ” (our favorite word) but not in the right way at all… sometimes. And sometimes poems seem to have a rule.. But poem seems to have special rules.. In order to have a good rhythm, I see somewhere the plural form is not so strict.
In this case, the eye is standing for the whole system of visual perception.
This is an example of synecdoche – a figure of speech in which the part of something stands for the whole of the thing(or vice versa)*.
Chambers Dictionary : figure of speech in which part of something is used to refer to or denote the whole thing.
