Meaning:
A welcome sight; someone or something you are glad to see.
Background:
This phrase was first recorded by Jonathan Swift, in A complete collection of
genteel and ingenious conversation, 1738:
"The Sight of you is good for sore Eyes."
The title of the work suggests that it was in use prior to his writing it
down. The currently used version of the phrase was first recorded by William
Hazlitt, in New Monthly Magazine, 1826:
"Garrick's name was proposed on condition he should act in tragedy and
comedy... What a sight for sore eyes that would be!"
That's all pretty straightforward. The rise of the World Wide Web has given
this phrase a new lease of life. `Sight', `site' and `cite' form one of the
small number of three-word homophone groups, that is, words that sound the
same but are spelled differently. Another three-word example is `you', `yew'
and `ewe'.
A quick scan of the Web courtesy of Google (Feb 2016) shows these hits:
"sight for sore eyes" - 549,000
"site for sore eyes" - 133,000
"cite for sore eyes" - 553
Top of the list for the latter two are websites selling optical supplies and
literary citations respectively, so they have some excuse. Many of the others
are just misspellings.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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A sight for sore eyes sprang into view at the court in front of the Pebble Beach
visitor center overlooking the Carmel Bay.
The last weekend of March, the seven of us spent the earlier part of the day
coming down from the valley and stopping by every attraction on the 17-Mile
Drive. It was perfectly warm and sunny on the freeway but by the scenic route,
the choppy sea had spouted a pall of salty mist that blotted out the sun. It
felt miserably repetitive to me: arriving, alighting, marching,
marveling, freezing up, running back to the cars, and moving on to the next
spot. It was not until we reached the Carmel gate at the south end, after
passing grand desolate estates, empty golf courses, and more boring rich
lifeless estates, that the weather finally let up. In no time, we were back in
civilization.
Amidst gaggles of mostly Asian tourists, two elders, my cousin and I, sat down
al fresco to scalding coffee, looking into the serene emrald cove beyond the
rooftops downhill and basking in the afternoon apricity. It felt unreal.
