eyes bigger than one's stomach
1
6.9
- idiom
- Informal
:
tener los ojos más grandes que el estómago
- After taking a large portion of pasta, he admitted that his eyes were bigger than his stomach when he couldn't finish it.
Examples
-
Don't let your eyes be bigger than your stomach.
Fiction book (1993) -
He was on the streets right after the war... eyes bigger than his stomach, like so many others.
-
When ordering at the buffet, I realized my eyes bigger than my stomach led me to pile on too much food.
-
She often finds her eyes bigger than her stomach when she looks at the menu and wants to try everything.
Synonyms
3
7.2
Someone who always eats or drinks too much
1
3.0
A person or animal that is given more food than the body needs and is too heavy
Wanting far more than is fair or reasonable
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
eyes + bigger + than + one + stomach
The phrase combines literal constituents ('eyes', 'bigger', 'stomach') into a simple metaphor: visual desire (eyes) exceeding physical capacity (stomach). Because the image is concrete and this metaphorical mapping (wanting more than you can eat) is fairly direct and common cross-linguistically, a B1 learner who knows the words will often be able to infer the meaning, though it still relies on a figurative (not strictly compositional) interpretation.
Etymology
Eyes bigger than one's stomach paints a clear picture: your eyes see so much food they seem bigger than your stomach, so you take more than you can eat. That's why it means 'to take more food than you can eat'.