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Glite Dictionary
to believe my ears

to believe my ears

2 7.2
To be so surprised by something you hear that you cannot accept it
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : no puedo creer lo que oigo
  • I couldn't believe my ears when I heard that.
  • hardly believe my ears

I mean, I, I could not believe my ears.

Examples

Surface Forms

believe my ears infinitive
believed my ears past
believed my ears past participle
believing my ears present participle
believes my ears third person singular

Morphology

believe + mine + ear

The meaning 'to be very surprised or unable to accept what one has just heard' is directly derived from combining 'believe' (accept as true) with 'my ears' (what I hear); the phrase literally expresses not accepting what one has heard. This composition follows a common cross-linguistic pattern (e.g. 'not believe what one hears'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would readily infer the meaning.

Etymology

The idiom believe my ears comes from the simple image of hearing something so strange that you doubt your own ears and whether you should believe it. So, saying you 'can't believe your ears' means 'to be very surprised' by what you heard.