An eye that is turned or looking in an unusual direction; also used to describe someone who has an eye turned or crossed.
Compound of cock (turned/tilted) and eye. The prefix 'cock-' often indicates something askew or misaligned, which pairs perfectly with an eye that doesn't track normally.
The term 'cockeyed' became popularized in American slang around the 1920s-1930s, and its use in phrases like 'that's a cockeyed idea' shows how a physical observation about misaligned eyes became metaphorically applied to bad logic or tilted thinking.
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